tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59212996767725664452019-03-21T04:42:09.596-07:00Quick Sip ReviewsShort(ish) Reviews of Speculative Short Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Word counts are approximate. Opinions are my own. (also, probably SPOILERS ABOUND!)Charles Payseurnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1247125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-86831006426340819032019-03-21T04:42:00.001-07:002019-03-21T04:42:09.585-07:00Quick Sips - Nightmare #78<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-omtRWIVu5as/XJN4e9OSXLI/AAAAAAAAFAU/0tbgrWfBBisljKP_5yCcRp1C_Oq-XneIQCLcBGAs/s1600/th_364f27d0a9e0903ba4ca66b270091c81_nightmare_78_march_2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-omtRWIVu5as/XJN4e9OSXLI/AAAAAAAAFAU/0tbgrWfBBisljKP_5yCcRp1C_Oq-XneIQCLcBGAs/s320/th_364f27d0a9e0903ba4ca66b270091c81_nightmare_78_march_2019.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Art by Yupachingping / Fotolia</td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>March brings a pair of rather chilling tales to <a href="https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/issues/mar-2019-issue-78/">Nightmare Magazine</a> even as spring arrives to the Northern Hemisphere. The stories look at broken systems, broken worlds, that push people into places where they can only participate. Where they can only choose how much they want to be victims or perpetrators. Where opting out isn’t really possible. This might take the form of a legacy and a world that bring about drastic and violent changes, or a criminal justice system where the justice part has been shattered entirely. The stories provoke and challenge, putting the characters in impossible and horrifying situations and forcing the readers to sit there with them, experiencing those no-win scenarios first had. It’s effectively done, and before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“All the Hidden Places” by <b>Caldwell Turnbull</b> (5199 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Nikki is traveling with her father, from the island of St. Thomas, all the way to somewhere in the snowy north. They are aiming for something, an old family home in a world that has been ravaged by a disease that acts a bit like rabies, that makes people not precisely zombies, but just as dangerous and infectious. As they travel, desperate for a respite, Nikki senses a secret that her father is carrying with him. About what happened to her mother. About why they had to leave the island. What she’s not prepared for, though, the secret she’s been carrying herself, that reveals itself at a rather dramatic moment.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Snow, Post-Apocalypse, Monsters, Wolves, Eating, Family</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This story captures a great sense of bleak desolation. That Nikki’s father has taken her to in hopes of finding safety and isolation. So that he can tell her something. Only for all that the landscape is barren, there are still plenty of dangers, and not all of them are people carrying the disease that has wiped out so many. There are “regular” humans as well only too happy to indulge in their cruelest impulses, and it doesn’t take too long for them to find Nikki and her father alone in the snowy wastes. I do like the way the story evokes the snow and the cold oppression of it, the slowness that it gives to everything and the danger, that people need shelter from it in order to live, that people need escape from it in order to be warm. Only the escape that Nikki gets is much more to do with her legacy, his inheritance from a mother who didn’t quite understand what was happening. And I like how it it framed, that the old world is over, failed, and a new world has asserted itself. One that requires a different sort of power and skills. One where regular humans might no longer be dominant. It’s a gripping read and a visceral one, bringing Nikki to a place where she can find a way forward into this new future, even if it’s on a road paved in blood and teeth. And I like how it shows that in the face of human monstrosity, sometimes the only answer is to adopt a monstrosity even more powerful. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Example” by <b>Adam-Troy Castro</b> (5802 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Hector Ortiz has been on Death Row for a long time for a crime he didn’t commit. Finally, on the day of his execution, he’s expecting to go through with the moment that’s been waiting for him for so long. Only things don’t exactly go to plan, and as the story progresses how the criminal justice system has progressed in the future the story imagines is revealed and it is...well, pretty fucked up. The piece maintains a focus on Hector and the mix of resignation and hope that the story takes him through, always aware of what’s coming and trying his make peace with it, even in the face of the complications that spring up, that threaten to break down his very careful composure. It’s a story that speaks to a future of the death penalty that it’s not hard to imagine, where corruption has made a mockery of justice.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Prisons, Justice, Innocence, CW- Death Penalty, Exoneration, Bargains</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> The take on justice here is an interesting one, and I like the way the story brings Hector back from his more stoic acceptance of events and proves that even though he thought he was done with hope and hurting, he’s not. Because worse in some ways that being wrong convicted of the crime and serving so much time is that he’s now found innocent and it doesn’t matter. And that’s where so much of the impact of the story comes from, from the incredibly hollow but “reasonable” justifications given for why it’s been made illegal to reverse an order of execution. How it’s placed the Correctness of the state and people pushing for the death penalty above the actual spirit of law and justice. For me I like the distinction made between Law and Order and justice. Because for me Order isn’t just. It’s about things being in place and kept in rigid control but there’s nothing just about it, and if the system by which things are ordered is evil then, well, the order is evil too. And such it is with this, showing how any system that allows for people to be murdered who could be innocent is wrong. That it’s better to murder no one than to let one person die who was wrongly convicted. Especially given the impact of intolerance and racism in that process. It’s a nice way of capturing the problems with the death penalty and projecting that forward, imagining what could happen is the bullshit reasons for executions were expanded (always in bad faith) so as to build up the spectacle of executions to make people afraid to break the order of the wealthy, rather than having anything to do with justice. Definitely a story worth checking out!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-89824573280700272502019-03-20T04:40:00.002-07:002019-03-20T04:40:26.514-07:00Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #273<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s1600/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="1000" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s400/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Art by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flaviobolla.com/">Flavio Bolla</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><i>The first <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-273/">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a> issue of March features two stories (one short and one novelette) about boys fighting back against the traumas and restrictions of their pasts. Seeking to gain some semblance of freedom from the harsh realities that seem to require their suffering and subjugation. And yet both resist the pressure to conform to the toxic and abusive cycles that they are unwilling parts of, seeking instead to break the systems and free themselves and those with them to reach for something better than they were given. These are two rather dark stories made light by the hope the characters manage, and the cages they escape. To the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Through the Doorways, Whiskey Chile” by <b>S.H. Mansouri</b> (7893 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Jeremiah is a bullfrog. And despite the unlikeliness of it all, he’s a good friend of Brady, a young man whose father left him with a tainted legacy of magic and the need for revenge. The piece unfolds in a very strange, maybe historical setting with touches of what I’d guess are Appalachia. Brady is a boy whose mother died when he was young and whose father used magic to sell a whiskey that made him powerful. Until the still burned down and everything in Brady’s life was thrown into chaos. Now mostly what Brady has is his anger, two guns, a smattering of magic, and the friendship of a mostly-loyal frog, who acts as narrator for this journey of Brady to confront the shadows of his past, his rage and his guilt and his fear. It’s dark and often violent, strange to the point of being surreal and dreamlike, but punchy and exhilarating and, ultimately, rather freeing.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Frogs, Family, Loss, Fire, Magic, Doors</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This story has such an interesting and weird feel to it. Not just that the narrator is a bullfrog who belches fire, but that the entire world is filled with a kind of dangerous magic, one that carries with a feeling that the landscape isn’t really tamed. This is a land with rules and with plenty of ways to die, and in some ways for me that gives it an almost Western feel, because of how there really isn’t a human law that is reigning supreme. Rather there is magic and there is violence, and Brady and Jeremiah find themselves in the thick of both, trying to find Brady’s father in order to get some answers about what happened to Brady’s mother, and maybe to get a bit of payback for the life that Brady might have had instead of the hell he lives with. For me it’s a story about cycles of abuse and masculinity and absent fathers. Brady’s father set him up to follow in his footsteps, to pass along the legacy of pain that had been given to him along with his magic. And Brady sees that but manages to reject becoming his father, refusing to give in to the pressure to conform and live by glorying in the power to exploit and hurt others. And all along Jeremiah is there, something between his friend and his conscience, trying to help him avoid the pitfalls that his father has left for him, trying to guide Brady toward a future where maybe he can have peace and healing. It’s a strange story, I don’t think I can say that enough, but it’s also hauntingly beautiful and very much worth checking out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“New Horizons” by <b>Alexander Stanmyer </b>(4079 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Chester is a boy on a train crew in service to an Empire but really more accurately in service to his captain, who saved him from slavery aboard a pirate ship and has given him the only relative security he’s ever had. Now that’s all changed as the captain has gone rogue and all the sure things in Chester’s life turn to ash and blood. The piece is front loaded with action, with battle and death and loss, and finds Chester having to make some hard decisions, and step into a role that he never really wanted or expected. It’s a grim read in some ways, set in a world of empire, slavery, and exploitation. At the same time, though, it features a push toward something better and a determination that the chance at freedom, especially one dearly bought, should not be given up on, and for all that it’s also a very fun read.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Trains, Traitors, CW- Slavery, Ships, Orphans</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This story has a great energy to it, opening in the middle of the action as Chester and the rest of the crew are running from the empire they used to work for, chased by a destructive god bent on their destruction. And the way the story unfolds builds up a brief but powerful picture of this group, something of a family under the leadership of the captain, who is something of a legend, and who can’t seem to help being decent and trying to do the right thing. And that ends, well...not great for her. But it’s an example to go by, because she’s who Chester looks up to, the person who saved him when he needed it, and he’s never forgotten that. When the time comes when he’s alone and other people are relying on him to act, to keep them safe, to save them as he was saved, I like how complex and loaded the story makes that moment, not that he’s instantly (or ever really) comfortable with that role but that he sees there’s this thing to do and there’s no one else to do it. And when he acts he does act decisively and with an eye toward trying to protect himself and others. It’s a very fun story, with action and a lot of uncertainty of what’s going to happen to these children in a setting where things are so grim, where they seem destined for a bad end because any attempt to try and protect or help them is harshly punished. Which is why they end up having to protect themselves, all while not giving up on the principles by which the captain lived and died. The story resists being a tragedy despite the death and destruction it features because the children retain hope and retain their freedom, looking at the horizons as holding for them the possibility of safety, as long as they stick together and keep pushing back against the abuses of the world. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-16269646568512372352019-03-19T04:40:00.000-07:002019-03-19T04:40:18.811-07:00Quick Sips - Glittership Summer 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pDVNWJErPAI/XJDUvSg3ZMI/AAAAAAAAFAI/ng8MWbjl22Y6Uu4LsJ9WRkxftsTKih0hACLcBGAs/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pDVNWJErPAI/XJDUvSg3ZMI/AAAAAAAAFAI/ng8MWbjl22Y6Uu4LsJ9WRkxftsTKih0hACLcBGAs/s320/cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div><i><br /></i></div><i>A new <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/gship07">Glittership</a> is out and super queer!!! Now, though the cover says Summer 2018, these are all original to 2019, which means that people nominating for awards should consider these very much eligible as 2019 releases. That said, there are three original stories and three original poems, as well as three reprints (two of which I’ve reviewed when they originally came out, I think). And the stories are wonderfully defiant, full of characters dealing with systems and settings where they are oppressed, where they are criminalized, and where people try to bend them to fit into what is comfortable and allowed. But even facing the threat of violence and erasure, these characters manage to reach for the unknown, for space where they can be safe and free. Not all of these are incredibly happy, but they are all driven by hope in the face of tyranny, and they are all amazing. So let’s get to the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“These Are the Attributes By Which You Shall Know God” by <b>Rose Lemberg </b>(1800 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> The narrator of this story is hoping to get into what seems to be a prestigious architectural school, where perhaps they can explore their vision of form that isn’t driven by reason, the guiding principle for humanity since they were shaped by the alien beings known as the Ruvan. And yet by my reading the story layers the ways that people and idea influence each other, twist each other, bending things so that they fit with some philosophy, some ideal. And the narrator, stuck in the middle, heretical and drawn to something not constrained by rigid lines, has to decide what they want and how to respond to a situation and environment that wishes to shape them according to the religion of reason. It’s a dark but beautiful story about the way that systems that are supposed to be universal and absolute create their own proofs at the expense of those who disprove them.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Architecture, Religion, Reason, Transformation, Queer Characters, Aliens</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>There’s so much to read into the subtle world building of the story, to this place where an alien race has remade the Earth after their own aesthetics and philosophies concerning form and function and reason. I admit to not be super read on Spinoza, but I love here that these aliens “spare” Earth because they see in his philosophy something worthy. Something that further proves their own thoughts on the matter. They are religious, but they have built reason as the only way of knowing God, the only way of touching the objective face of the universe. And so their art all bends around that, constructed to try and present a unified front against the forces of disorder and faith and imagination. And I like that the rebel book in this setting is something like the Bible, is this set of stories that speak to a more miraculous and emotional religious experience, one that the narrator connects to, yearning for the swirling shapes of nature, of coexistence, of landing in a field without damaging the plants like the Ruvans used to do, rather than razing cities to create flat “perfect” landscapes. And I love that this change in the Ruvans speaks to the dangers of dogma that is too rigid and which pretends to be universal, because it refuses to make exceptions for the exceptional, for those that don’t fit or see or experience the universe in the same way. Those people are, like the Earth, expected to be broken down and recreated. Made to fit enough to prove the religious doctrines, without a care for their consent or joy or the benefit of having people who are different and can innovate creatively. So yeah, it’s a wrenching story, heartbreaking for the trauma that the narrator goes through, and yet there is a resilient beauty to it as well, that they are not broken entirely, though their shape is altered. That they still reach out into the darkness toward the forbidden and mysterious. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Tell the Phoenix Fox, Tell the Tortoise Fruit” by <b>Cynthia So</b> (4900 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Sunae and Oaru are girls growing up in Miraya, an island that was until recently under colonial rule and is now free, but not free of the violence that has been done to it, the damage to its history and culture. And part of that is the story behind a monster that must be Appeased every ten years, but that has been defeated before for much longer than that. On the island and in the colonial power that rule for so long, queer relationships are illegal, punished by feeding the guilty to the monster. And yet Sunae and Oaru grow up very much in love, and together hope to be able to deliver their home from the threat of the monster. In getting there, though, they first have to confront the more power monsters—prejudice, injustice, and the systemic curating of history.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Poetry, Monsters, CW- Discrimination, CW- Colonization, Queer MC, History</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This is an absolutely amazing story about love and about history and about the weight of erasure. The setting is one laced with intolerance, where being queer carries with it a death sentence. And yet as the story goes it seems to build the idea that this wasn’t always the case on Miraya, that this might be the case of a colonizing power coming in and rewriting history as well as the law in order to support their own agenda and morality. And that Miraya now carries those wounds, unable to heal because the history of the island has been destroyed and carted away, locked in the attics of the colonizers. The story follows this incredible arc of Sunae having to rediscover the legacy of her people and their stories through the tinted lens of those who altered those histories to suit their vision of what should have been. The queerness is erased in the colonizers’ text, made “safe” and even supporting their own prejudices by sanitizing it. Sunae has to dig deeper, has to reclaim the history that was denied her in order to fight for her very survival, to not be killed for being queer, for the love that is actually the key to saving her people from the Appeasements that have been going on ever since colonization suppressed the truth of how to fight back. With love. And art. And it’s just this wonderfully imagined, powerfully written story of defiance and historical reclamation and queer love and you all need to go out and read it now. It’s so good!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Girl With All the Ghosts” by <b>Alex Yuschik</b> (4400 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Go-Eun works in a funeral palace, a place that is supposed to care for and contain the dead, preventing them from becoming ghosts that might attack the city and necessitate the intervention of the giant mechs that are employed to put them down. She’s also a fanfic writer, essentially medicating herself with the release of writing while she patrols the halls and floors of her work, counting down the days until she quits and can get an easier job. The piece is full of a longing, a desire for the world to not be so broken, for there to be some hope and some way to do something meaningful, so complicated by the way that employment and exploitation and capitalism have gone. It’s lonely and lovely and it’s complex and punctuated by action, violence, and defiance.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Ghosts, Employment, Fanfiction, Queer MC, Mechs</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>There’s so much here that just speaks to the way that exploitation permeates a culture, pushing Go-Eun to work and earn money but in a way that is in some ways killing her. That risks her physical and ethereal self, yes, but also that is just incredibly not rewarding for her mentally or spiritually. She’s in a constant state of trying to escape, of trying to distract herself from the reality of the world she lives in, one that has been wrecked by the dead and by the treatment of the dead. To me, at least, part of the reason for the ghosts is that life leaves them too hungry, too in need of relief and rest and yet unable to rest. Exhausted but incapable of feeling done. The way that Go-Eun works constantly and even when she’s not she’s working on something else, seeking validation and positive feedback and something to keep her going. Everything she does and loves is viewed as useless, and worthless, and yet she feels she has no real choices, no access to loving the things that are supposed to “matter.” Which I think allows them to really connect to this ghost that she comes across in her last days of work, that allows her to recognize its hunger, because she feels it as her own. And there’s something beautiful and tragic about it, about the kind of inevitability that seems to permeate, but that Go-Eun does eventually begin to push back against. Because it’s the narrative that allows the exploitation to continue. That there is no better option. And Go-Eun rejects that, reaching for something better even if for most of the story she’s not sure what that would look like. She gets there, and what she sees is beautiful and haunting and it’s an amazing story!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poetry</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Lamentations of Old Money” by <b>Chanter</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of desire and in some ways of the difficulty of living in a place where your desires conflict and shift, never quite fitting with an established mold, always pulled from thing to thing. For me, the piece follows the narrator, Jennifer, as she explores her desires, what she decidedly doesn’t want (which in some ways is easier to enunciated and list) and the things that she wants. And I really like the way the story shows that push and pull, the different sides of the coin of her desire, because for me is speaks to this unavailability of something that feels truly right. It seems to reveal a character who can she herself happy in many different ways, but only piecemeal, only a bit here, a bit there, a sort of collage of happiness and fulfillment, but without a specific reference or example that captures everything. Because what she wants is not something that really get represented in media, that gest put out there as possible. But there are parts of many things that speak to her, and she’s left trying to find a way to harmonize them, even when they seem in conflict with each other. And it does such a great job of building that up through layers, through repetition, showing a person who wants many things, companionship and community and intimacy but not sex, not submission but maybe a kind of enthusiastic subordination. It’s a complicated and lovely read, with maybe a bit of commentary on older views of romance and chastity and adventure, seeing something there that feels alive vibrant but wanting to rewrite it, recontextualize it to be consensual and queer and freeing. And yeah, definitely check this one out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Female Figure of the Early Spedos Type, 1884-” by <b>Sonya Taaffe</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This is a rather strange poem for me, that speaks to a sort of archetype, an idea of a woman who seems to become something more, a figure that represents something iconic and recognizable. The piece follows the narrator as they recall this person and their time with her. How they meet and accompany each other through Europe, from Naxos to Paris, and in that time how this woman transforms, from a sort of blank slate to something else. For me, the poem takes on time and change, looking at how a more stylized or generalized depiction of art can change depending on the person interpreting it. For me, the piece speaks to this way that the narrator experiences art, the way the narrator experiences this woman, how the narrator feels like they have a deeper understanding of both through this experience they have. And it’s possible that I’m missing some context or the depth of a reference, but for me I get the feeling that the narrator is talking about this moment they have of connection, of understanding, where they feel they have received a name, made person and intimate something that was otherwise general and featureless. And how that kind of experience, of really getting to know a person, is transforming and artistic in itself. Timeless and yet linked so much to the one person having that moment. For me at least, I really like the feeling that this is part of something different, where the narrator is experiencing something profound by this interaction, by this meeting—like a person coming across a figure five thousand years on and being deeply moved by it. So yeah, it’s a wonderful piece and one that’s definitely worth spending some time with!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Chrysalis” by <b>Kendall Evans</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This piece speaks to me of transformation and hope. It also does a really nice job of mixing genres and feels, moving from starships to terrestrial festivals, from the cold between stars to the coziness of home. The imagery feels to me to revolve around fertility and birth, though not really about human reproduction. Instead the newborns are a ship, a robot, a mutant of interstellar dust. The title seems to indicate that there’s a becoming involved here, not a birth as such but a sort of transformation, where something is waiting, nearly dormant, but about to become something else, something beautiful and powerful and free. The first stanza echoes this most clearly, and for me at least the piece as a whole might tell the story leading to that moment, where this starship began its life as something else, as the creation of the narrator and their partner, and together they make the robot that will one day become the ship, this creation part of something larger as well, all of them linked to greater and greater cycles of becoming, pointed outward into the stars, allowing people to push further and further into the mysterious night. And the structure, the short lines and short stanzas, give it a feeling of speed and progress and progression, that this is part of a system, a cycle, but one that moves forward, a wheel turning rather than a circle spinning. For me at least it’s a piece that speaks to the iterations of potential, of reaching for something with passion and mind, dancing toward a new frontier and a new way of existing. It’s a strange and excellent read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-83285549910478491412019-03-18T04:44:00.003-07:002019-03-18T04:44:38.217-07:00Quick Sips - Uncanny #27 [March stuff]<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-himBbHYK-tI/XI-ESAT5SjI/AAAAAAAAE_8/9GP1emev5GMbhGebq8GecN1RkuV4fJc6wCLcBGAs/s1600/MarApr19-Issue-27._Medium-340x510.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-himBbHYK-tI/XI-ESAT5SjI/AAAAAAAAE_8/9GP1emev5GMbhGebq8GecN1RkuV4fJc6wCLcBGAs/s320/MarApr19-Issue-27._Medium-340x510.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="http://blog.christopherjonesart.com/">Christopher Jones</a></td></tr></tbody></table><i>Three short stories and two poems usher <a href="https://uncannymagazine.com/issues/uncanny-magazine-issue-twenty-seven/">Uncanny Magazine</a>’s March offerings in with style, revolution, and heartbreak. The pieces move around survivors. Not people who have outlasted others, but those who are surviving their own personal hells and oppressions, their own personal griefs and losses. They are survivors by necessity, their worlds condensing in a squeeze of despair that makes everything seem impossible. And yet at the same time, these stories work to show people helping people. Showing main characters able to move to more active resistance and freedom because they are not alone, because they have the support they need to make their stories about more than just enduring the hardships they face, but rather excelling in the face of them to find healing and hope for the future. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power” by <b>Karen Osborne</b> (5624 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Mey is a sin-eater, one of a long line who have drank the nanobot-laced blood of the captain of the generation ship in order to rid them of their doubts and the stain of any...indiscretions. In theory it’s to make sure that people can trust fully the grace of the captains as they steer a course for the planet paradise. In practice...well, things are a whole lot darker. The piece is gripping and dripping with sin, with the memories that Mey is forced to endure by the ghosts in their blood, the ghosts of the captains who have done things no person should have to witness, and make certain that Mey cannot reveal their secrets. Even through the blood-soaked memories that make up the history of the ship, though, there is a resilience in Mey that they got from their father, that they might be able to fight back against the system that has for so long operated with impunity.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Space, Generation Ships, Memories, Ghosts, Lies, Sins</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I love what the story does with Mey and the physical ways that the ghosts inside them use to silence them. To make sure that they cannot speak and cannot investigate the crimes that have been committed on the ship. For Mey it’s a living nightmare, never able to tell anyone of these horrors that have layered deeper and deeper into their soul. The goal is to break them, to make it so that they will not fight, that they will be complicit in this system that no one really benefits from but the Captain. Because it makes manifest the way that the secret abuses of the past often become chains that prevent us from moving into a better future. Because they are things that must be denied or hidden. Because those who end up knowing about them find that it’s too difficult to fight back against the lies and legends of the past. That the lies have become too powerful to take down, especially when trying to do so brings down the brutal violence of a corrupt regime. Mey has the strength to keep going regardless, though, and the moment they have proof that might actually do some real damage they know how quickly they must act. Even so, the story is also conscious of the complications of needing help from within the system, as well. And how to deal with those whose guilt is being equated with other people’s lives. I love how Mey doesn’t shrink when asked by the newest Captain what is to be done. When she admits that she is haunted. Because making too much room for her feelings would push out acknowledging the atrocities that have been committed. And it allows them both to reach for a place where they can dismantle what is broken, and leave the situation with a whole lot more hope, not least because they can let the voices of the past finally stay in the past, and set their sights on a bright new future. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Every Song Must End” by <b>Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam</b> (5417 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>No Spoilers: </b></i>Florence is grieving a loss of something she had never expected to have, a love between herself and a man other than her husband. Their relationship was not one of betrayal but a sort of opening up of her relationships with Asher, her husband, as they began a new relationship with another couple, Henry and Clara. And the piece does a stunning job of building up this relationship in a way that doesn’t break her other relationships, that doesn’t shame or judge her for what she feels, and that, while things don’t go exactly To Plan, doesn’t punish her for exploring her desires and affections. It’s a beautiful piece that touched by a deep sadness and sorrow, because of how things go, but I think does a wonderful job of sort of underlining the point that love is not a finite resource, and it definitely leaves room for healing and hope.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Poly Relationships, Mars, Space, Separation, Love, Queer MC(?)</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a beautiful and rather heartbreaking story, in large part because of how it refuses to follow traditional trajectories. Which I guess is rather appropriate, as it’s a story that involves people going off to Mars, risking the unknown and expanding beyond Earth, not exactly because they don’t love their home planet, but because they also want to go beyond. It echoes in Florence’s desires, that she’s deeply in love with her husband but also capable of loving other people, and experiencing that in ways that most narratives would punish her for. And I want to say that it’s not like it doesn’t cause her grief. Because Henry, the man she falls in love with, leaves the planet and moves away forever. But what I appreciate about the story is that this is never framed as a punishment. It’s not her just desserts because she had relations with a man outside her marriage. Everything doesn’t implode. Her marriage doesn’t fail, and she doesn’t get cancer, and nothing is broken so bad that it can’t be fixed. And that’s what I like about the story, that it really does approach love as something that doesn’t have to be so jealous and so singular. That yes, Florence is sad about losing Henry, and a little bit broken by it. But that’s just giving respect to a relationship that had come to mean a lot to her. And that it’s not wrong to grieve that. Nor is it wrong to see beyond that grief to a time when she might be better enough to try again. Because there’s nothing wrong with it, and because it obviously can work out. She’s built up this amazing relationship with Asher, so there’s no saying she can’t do that with someone else. It’s an affirming message that people can love outside the traditional Western ways and reach for happiness and it can be messy and hurt sometimes but that it’s natural. That it’s real. And that it’s worth it for her, and wonderful. And it makes for an emotionally powerful and resonating read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Sharp Breath of Birds” by <b>Tina Connolly</b> (1119 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Told in the second person, you are a girl then woman in what feels to me like WWII-era America, discovering that you are different from most of the rest of the world. You see birds. Personal birds. And you’re not the only one, as your friend Alice sees them, too, and together you create fantasies where you are bird bandits or princesses who can save each other, or yourselves, or any number of other things. But cultures can be confining things, and marriage to a man a cage for any bird dreaming of flying free. The piece is heartfelt and magical, your resolve and comfort in your own body and desires a sword and shield and ship with which to sail into brighter skies and daring adventures.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Birds, Feathers, Marriage, Queer MC, Flight</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I love how the story takes the main character, the You of the piece, and builds up this trap. A trap that you see and yet one that you walk into all the same because of the weight of expectations, the weight of everyone wanting you to be “normal” and do “normal” things. Especially for the time period, having models of more “deviant” behavior wasn’t really a thing, and so it’s heartbreaking to see these two girls who have created a sort of language and space for their identities and desires to be forced to pass in a world that will not accept them. A world that demands they cage their hearts and limit themselves to trying to force themselves to be like they’re supposed to be. And I love that you just...don’t. That the more you age the more certain you are that the birds, that the space, that the magic of the world you see around you isn’t wrong. That indeed it’s the world that you’re forced to engage in that is false, and the one that other people would label fantasy is what is true and real. And I love that it’s something where you are able to embrace that and take wing, expecting to have to rescue Alice but finding instead that the stories never left her heart, either. And that neither of you have to save the other, but can instead embark into the bright dawn together, taking that magic with and finding a place where you can live that truth. It’s a beautiful and freeing read, and you should definitely go check it out!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poetry</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Childhood Memory from the Old Victorian House on Warner” by<b> Beth Cato</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This piece delves into the past, into memory, and into a kind of haunting that is unsettling. Because it mixes with nostalgia, with the feelings of comfort and protection that come with the idea of home. The narrator of the piece is confronted with something, though, with proof that what they thought was magical and beautiful was actually something darker. And I love the way that it shows that twisting of the home, of a room, into something that isn’t safe. That isn’t protective. It’s a moment that for me speaks to so much and especially to the moments when a child realizes that they aren’t safe in their own home, if indeed that’s something a person ever has to face. But yeah, facing that as a child and having that stand as a sort of architectural home for their fears and their insecurities is powerful and achieved so well through the poem. It’s dark and it’s wrenching because of the way they aren’t believed, because of the heartbreaking image of the butterfly trapped in the wallpaper trying to escape, the ways that it feels like the narrator is trapped there as well, by what happened, by their fear. And that it takes something drastic, takes this big Thing like a fire burning it all away to sort of psychical break the link and allow the narrator to move on. To heal. Because the room and the house are gone, and the haunting in some ways has to go with them. It’s a beautifully rendered poem, with short lines and an almost winding feel that put me in the mind of memories, of a vague haze of age and magic and nightmare, and I love that ends on that note of hope, that sometimes the prisons burn all the way to the ground and prisoners don’t burn with it. They get to slips free, and away. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Taho” by <b>D.A. Xiaolin Spires</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of food and of distance, of home even on a distant and mostly barren planet. It features a bot, a vendor of Taho, as he moves through the wastes of Mars on his way to a settlement, a civilization where he might peddle his wares. The poem is strange in setting and tone, mixing this seller of desserts with an alien desert, no one for miles to hear and yet still his call the same, as if entreating the planet itself, calling for the sake of calling rather than because he expects customers. For me it’s a piece that speaks to the distance that people can go, that humanity and civilization can go, and the things that people bring with them. Not just the technology and the drive, but the bits of home that stretch out from their origins and into the stars. This bot, diligently carrying Taho toward a place that might appreciate it. Going about his trek because that’s what he does, that’s who he is. And it’s a familiar sight in a very unfamiliar place, almost eerie with the uncanniness of it (which hey, fitting given the publication). A bot selling Taho to an empty world might seem dark to some, but for me the piece doesn’t really carry a threat or any indication that humanity has been devastated. For me, at least, the swinging dessert, the call out into the Martian sands, is more comforting than anything. A testament to the power of small things—comforts and practises that will not die out just because humanity shoots itself into space. That will continue because there is something warm and good about them. Nostalgic, maybe, but not solely. Delicious as well. And hopeful, if also kind of lonely and haunting. That across this dessert there will be people who will answer the call of the vendor, who will find relief in his offerings and who can take heart from the fact that he’s still out there, calling, calling. It’s a lovely read but I’m really hungry now, so be warned and definitely go check this one out!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-68294486920669324642019-03-15T04:46:00.001-07:002019-03-15T04:46:13.691-07:00Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/04/2019 & 03/11/2019<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OpCgZB6VmAI/XIuQSNOHRVI/AAAAAAAAE_o/v-uqqxYIOEAme0TzNB8FEiicDxvpzGOKACLcBGAs/s1600/skinwalkers-600px-333x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OpCgZB6VmAI/XIuQSNOHRVI/AAAAAAAAE_o/v-uqqxYIOEAme0TzNB8FEiicDxvpzGOKACLcBGAs/s320/skinwalkers-600px-333x500.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="https://www.helenmask.com/">Helen Mask</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Two short stories and two poems open up <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/4-march-2019/">Strange</a> <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/11-march-2019/">Horizons</a>’ March content. The fiction shines with magic and with beings who are a bit different than humans, passing through a world where they are set apart by their passions and their hungers and their hurts. Looking for ways to find expression and acceptance. The pieces swirl around love and art, meaning and freedom, and the poetry adds some excellent layering to the themes, revealing people and feelings ripe with longing, uncertainty, and, as always, strangeness. To the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Skinwalkers Ball” by <b>Hammond Diehl</b> (4802 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Building up around a kind of fashion show/competition, the story unfolds before the eyes of an unnamed narrator (though it might be possible to guess what it might be). And this is no ordinary competition, no ordinary fashions on display. The contestants are skin walkers, and their creations are elaborate skins that make them into a host of different mythological creatures. Monsters and gods, they preen and perform in the hopes of moving the judge of the competition, an Alchemist named Ambrose. In keeping with the themes of the story, though, what’s happening on the surface of the show is only a sort of costume to what’s really going on, which is much darker and hungrier than it seems at first. It’s a strange read with an almost creepy feel for me, but a lovely prose and a complex view of art, performance, and skins.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Art, Revenge, Skins, Bargains, Competitions</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This story carries with it an air of mystery and pageantry that is rather great. Framing it as a sort of fashion show is a great choice because of how, as I read it, it layers the ways that disguises and art are used. It asks in some ways what can constitute art, and looks at the figure of the main character, who just might be death themself, as perhaps a bit of an artist themself. And I just love that it’s all a ruse, all a dance of deceptions and bargains. The narrator has set a lot of this up, is in some ways desperate for an audience, one that might be able to really appreciate what it is they’ve done. There is a care and a kind of invested disinterest that pulls them between not wanting to seem like they care too much about this and being really very wrapped up if it’s working, if it’s going to be everything that they wanted. And it’s in some ways a story of revenge, of a father finally punishing the person who has been killing his children. That’s not the death that the narrator seems most interested in, though, and I like how there’s that other level, where the narrator is interested in Ambrose because they respect him as an artist. Because they want to be seen as an artist, their work experienced as art, and all of this kind of sets them up to really do that. The narrator is working in their own medium to create this powerful experience, in a way that mostly only they get to appreciate. But here they want to give someone else a peek, because they want to be seen, to be known. Why else sign their name at the end? And it’s a great commentary on art, through a work of fiction that then layers again with the artist, the author, acting as the guiding hand of it all, perhaps just as desirous as the narrator to ask if this is art, if this works, if this did what it was meant to do. And I’m not sure I can answer that except to say that it’s a gorgeous piece that’s very much worth spending some time with. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Wind Whispers Secrets to the Sea” by J<b>ordan Kurella</b> (919 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Told in first person plural, the narrator of the story seems to be the winds, a person who is a force of nature made of movement and emotions, stormy in their quest to find what they want. And the piece follows them as they meet people, as they seek out something that will give them what they want romantically and sexually and in all the ways that they are drifting and needing. It’s a strange piece, full of a almost violent energy, a drive that cannot be ignored, and one that needs something equally powerful in order to feel sated and fulfilled. Like the winds, there is something almost ephemeral and flighty, but pulled by a weight no less vast and solid toward an ending that is powerful and tender and passionate and secure.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Winds, Seas, Fire, Queer MC, Relationships, Secrets</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I like how this story takes on relationships and power and allows the narrator space and time to work towards what they really want, a partnership that can be fully even, with neither person dominating, neither person confining the other. The relationships that the narrator describes—with their ex-husband, with Cole, and even outside of that with the women that they find afterward, are described often in terms of restriction. They don’t quite fit because the narrator is a wind and cannot really fit into any constraint that does not take into account their full self. And so the relationships they form end up featuring people holding them down, trying to hold them inside a shape that works for the relationship but doesn’t work for the narrator. They live with a certain kind of loneliness, a certain kind of airy hollow that they are trying to fill, and find some measure of success and comfort and acceptance and fulfillment with the sea, with someone who can accept them fully and support them in the ways that others could not. It’s a story for me that carries with it an edge of chill, the narrator someone who seems to have known pain and trauma, and I like that the story is affirming but not in the most traditional ways. It’s about a consuming need and drive and power, that of the wind itself, and how it finally finds its home and its equal in the sea, in an incredibly intimate and freeing moment. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poetry</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Absence” by<b> Lore Graham</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of parting, of two people going their separate ways. As the title implies, it’s a piece that is ripe with the hollow feeling left when someone is no longer there, in this case because they have left the planet for reasons unknown. Not, I think, our own Earth, but rather the poem unfolds somewhere else, on some other world that gives the separation that much more a sense of finality. Of distance. The piece looks at this ended relationship from the perspective of the narrator, who promised their now-departed lover a night together and then backed out of it. Which I like because of the way it complicates fault and the dissolution of this relationship, of what they had. The way that it doesn’t exactly give closure to it, though I don’t think that they have done anything wrong. Rather, I think that they were dealing with something large, with a fear and a pain that they didn’t know how to confront, and so they took the way out they saw. Which is refreshing to see in a way because it’s something where the narrator is caught between this person being gone, and perhaps knowing that they were going to go, and their decision to leave, to turn back, to maybe assert that much power over the situation. And no, it didn’t mean that the relationship didn’t end, didn’t prevent their former partner from going, but neither does even a promise mean they can’t change their mind and deal with the feelings that come after. And I like how that abrupt ending gives the absence described a sharpness, similar to how the narrator speaks of art and poetry and pain. It’s a piece that for me captures a sadness and a grief that goes beyond just the parting of lovers, but speaks to the dissatisfaction the narrator seems to have with the planet they’re on, with the dullness they’re stuck in. Which seems something that this other person helped to cut through and now the narrator has lost their coping mechanism, their confidante, their comfort. It’s sad and messy and full of a want the narrator can’t seem to give name to, that’s not exactly this person who is gone, but something deeper and more profound. And it’s a great read that I very much recommend you check out immediately!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Nina Karlovna Bari (1901-1961)” by <b>Jessy Randall</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem looks at math and intent, history and tragedy, in the person of a mathematician, after whom the poem is titled. And it’s a piece in some ways about her death, about the way that her end is interpreted because of who he was and what she meant to people. The piece is structured as a history, or perhaps a bit of historical trivia, introducing the titular character and setting up her significance, why there are people who have opinions about her death, which seems to have come suddenly and seems to carry with it a bit of controversy. And for me the piece looks at the whys not of her death but the reaction to it. On how people want to find meaning in that death, want to find intent in it, that she threw herself in front of the train, because the alternative, that it was somehow an accident, seems...inappropriate for a woman like her, for a mathematician that looked at connections and convergences. But the poem notes that there’s no way to know, and that in some ways it being an accident is no less likely just because it would seem less than satisfactory to her life. Because in many ways all deaths are less than satisfactory, and no amount of meaning or appropriateness really makes them less so. And I like the poem for the way it stays at a distance. The math here is referred to as descriptive, and the poem is no less so, not exactly making conclusions of its own but bringing the reader to a point to see the convergences, the ways that everything might fit together. It seems to ask which we prefer, a universe in which these things are connected, in which they all come together and inform on each other, or a universe in which these are random. Which do we feel is more likely, and which more elegant or appealing? And by constructing the poem with that distance, with that uncertainty and light touch, it allows the reader to go as deep as they want, to start looking for other convergences as well. And it makes me want to know more about this mathematician, and about the history behind all of this, in part so that I can make further connections, this contemporary poem now converging as well with math and with history in a fascinating way. Another wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-57792141072666192532019-03-14T04:53:00.001-07:002019-03-14T04:53:08.664-07:00Quick Sips - Apex #118<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dk31uz7WJHQ/XIpAGgEN8TI/AAAAAAAAE_c/d-Sm_CpjE1UyUB1a6ba_OQicntVl1lX1wCLcBGAs/s1600/AM118cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="210" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dk31uz7WJHQ/XIpAGgEN8TI/AAAAAAAAE_c/d-Sm_CpjE1UyUB1a6ba_OQicntVl1lX1wCLcBGAs/s1600/AM118cover.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Art by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.aaronjasinski.com/">Aaron Jasinski</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Despite editor Jason Sizemore’s continued health issues (hope there's improvement, Jason!), <a href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/issue-118-march-2019/">Apex Magazine</a> definitely isn’t slowly down, with three original short stories and a new novelette, all looking at history and memory, violation and revelation. The stories explore the ways that people build prisons, for themselves and for others, and how much it hurts to have to inhabit those places, barred in and often cut off from hope. They run the gamut from historical fantasy to humorous science fiction, showing that humanity casts a long shadow on history, and in that shadow all manner of greater darknesses can lurk concealed. It’s a gripping, rending issue, and I’ll get right to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Prison-House of Language” by <b>Elana Gomel</b> (5600 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Dr. Sophia Abdoul experiences language much differently from the rest of the world, it seems. To her, speaking is painful, words having different tastes and feels but none of them exactly pleasant. It’s something that has pushed her into linguistics, in an attempt to understand her condition and maybe find a language that suits her, and it’s her work that brings her to the attention of the military, which has a strange experiment on its hands that’s seen some...unexpected results. The piece is dark and with a voice that manages to be elegant and blunt at the same time, capturing an earnest feeling that is refreshing and, it turns, out, piercing. It’s a story about prisons and those who keep them, and all those trapped inside.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Language, Translation, Aliens, Experiments, Dreams</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>The story is an interesting one in how it plays with the idea that human perception is shaped by language. That how we experience the universe changes with how we frame that universe in language. It’s a theory that’s existed for a long time, and one that it’s rather difficult to either prove or disprove, but it’s certainly compelling, and I love how Sophia approaches that, how she, through the experiment she is brought into, is able to see through the bars of the prison. The story is not a particularly happy one (not surprising given the publication), but it has this haunting beauty to it, that Sophia not only has a different relationship to language but that it means she experiences our world differently. It makes her isolated and alone, because in many ways, despite her vast skills with languages, she’s the only person who really speaks her own language. And she’s been searching and searching in part to break through that solitude, to find some connection to something bigger. Which she does end up finding, though not at all in the way she expects, and I just love the creepy way the story twists language from something that’s supposed to be our greatest tool, into something that has a much more sinister purpose. It exists as something that helps us explore our universe, but also conceals so much as well, and keeps us in many ways trapped by the limitations of our language to properly imagine and conceive of what reality might be like. And I love how the story takes that and plants this seed of doubt that might bloom into something dark and terrible. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>"Where Gods Dance” by <b>Ben Serna-Grey</b> (1200 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> A father brings to life a series of beings following the death of his son. So don’t expect a very light read, I guess is what I’m saying. The piece looks at the emotions left over after the death of a child and follows this man as he gives them life, as he cycles through what’s happened. The piece revolves around loss, not just the initial loss but each subsequent one driving the narrator deeper and deeper into his own pain. The prose is tinged with longing and with sadness, with desperation and a certain knowing doom with which narrator pushes forward toward an end that pulls him under like quicksand.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>CW- Death of a Child, Resurrection, Constructs, Guilt, Grief</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>The story in some ways has a touch of fairy tale to it, in part because of the way that it’s structured as this recurring cycle. The man lost his son, and so he goes about trying to make something to fill the void left over or else to exorcise the pain that he feels. And yet each one has its problems, its ways of not being human, that eventually lead to a new grave. The man grows more desperate with each failure, and though he remains fairly tender and compassionate towards the creations, even that has a limit. For me the story is about the weight of grief and guilt, the way that the father can’t let go of what has happened. He can’t release himself from the guilt of all the time he had but didn’t use as well as he could have. All the moment he could have had with his son. So that he’s haunted by all these shades, these shadows of his son, and gets so caught up in them that he ends up forgetting that actual boy who died. And so when the time comes for him to try once more, one final time to bring back his son, he can’t. It’s about the dangers of letting grief consume all things, of becoming isolated and alone with only an obsession and a growing line of graves. It’s chilling for me because it features that slowly fading warmth of this man losing his son again and again, and losing himself in the process. A fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Curse Like a Savior” by <b>Russell Nichols</b> (3900 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> The narrator of this story is a hologram technician, fixing up projections that have been...compromised. In most cases, it’s the case of hackers managing to tweak the code enough for, say, Jesus Christ to start dropping f-bombs. It’s a living, but one of the dangers with working around religious figures (as a non-religious person) is the potential of being dragged into a religious discussion. Something he’s contractually not allowed to do. And yet... The story is a mix of humor and a growing darkness. Because even as the narrator goes about his business, what he thinks he knows about the situation might not be what’s really going on. And the twist, when it comes, is a bit shocking, a bit hilarious, and a bit terrifying.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Holograms, Religion, CW- Rape, Repair, Hacking</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>The story does a great job of combining humor and something decidedly darker, swirling around the ideas of hacking and blasphemy. The narrator here is someone who has a job and just wants to do it, likes avoiding people for the most part and considers himself rather careful and rather clever. He’s also a man who has been hurt, especially by the church, so there might also be a part of him that enjoys that he makes his money as a result of people hacking religious holograms. Except that it brings him back into contact with religious people, and some that have even less scruples than the hackers who would target such religious icons. For me the story plays with the idea that religion makes a person slow or backwards. Because most religions are conservative and slow to adopt new technology, there’s this sense that they are almost safe in that way, that something about hacking and having religious convictions are at odds. But with a Christianity at least that evangelizes in a rather capitalist way, innovation is the key to increased profits and increased influence. And wrapped in the guise of disapproval and Old Fashioned Values, it’s not until it’s too late that most people, the narrator included, realize that the game isn’t what they thought it was. It’s a fun, nicely twisted story that shows just how complex and insidious some cons can be, and while I don’t think that it frames all religions as cons, I do think it shows that religion can be a great vehicle for deception and exploitation. And that it’s very dangerous to assume that just because a person loudly complains about something they must be innocent of doing it. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“O Have You Seen the Devile with his Mikerscope and Scalpul?” by <b>Jonathan L. Howard </b>(9500 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>The narrator of this strange story has been tasked with going back over the Jack the Ripper killings. Essentially reliving the crimes again and again in order to...understand them, maybe, or “solve” them through some means. The piece follows them as they peer into the past, following the women that were murdered, tracing the outline of this shadowy killer who was never caught and who remains an almost romantic figure in history, the “first” serial killer, or at least the one to best capture a great deal of attention in the English-speaking West for it. It’s a story that reads a bit like a nightmare lost in an obsession, the narrator driven back again and again to places they don’t want to be, all looking for what’s important, what’s vital about these killings, and finding that the answer isn’t what they thought it might be. Or isn’t, at least, what most people would assume. It’s a haunting read, like history itself, but with a twist of triumph to banish at least one monster back into obscurity.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>History, Jack the Ripper, Mysteries, Murder, Serial Killers</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>History is a dark place, made darker at times by the obsessions of the present, by the fascination people have with brutality and murder. With the way that people wrap heinous crimes up in layers of legend that make them somehow admirable. Jack the Ripper is something of a bogeyman now, a figure at the heart of a million conspiracies, and the narrator of the story is so fucking done with that. Is done with thinking of this killer as anything more than ordinary. Or no, less than ordinary. A rot. A shit. The story pierces through the veil of history only to linger not on Jack, but on the women who died. It’s their part in all of this that the narrator seeks to understand, that the narrator empathizes with. There is no moment of wanting to be the asshole killing them, no catharsis in their pain and terror and death. No, that’s saved for a different target, one whom much more deserves to be imagined helpless and afraid, broken and screaming. And in that the story takes history and seeks to redeem it. To reveal not the inherent awfulness of humanity but to show that through even the darkest of times there are people being good and decent. That even in rotten and fetid London when people think everything was dirty and diseased and “perfect” for Jack the Ripper to emerge, there was a lot of good, and the evil was really things like income inequality and the lack of a social safety net. Which gee, sounds familiar. The story reframes the common narrative, finding one that rings no less “true” but isn’t weighted down by all the violation and ego that goes with most Ripperology. And it’s an intricately layered story, a trip into the past to affirm that Jack the Ripper wasn’t a superhero, and that he doesn’t deserve to be remembered. Definitely a story to spend some time with!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews">https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-53328385314550848162019-03-13T04:52:00.001-07:002019-03-13T04:52:05.462-07:00Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #150<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MCCJz2058NY/XIjuY2ccaqI/AAAAAAAAE_Q/I-ztnZG3n7QUWt4hHINGcEHsPFb9McaqQCLcBGAs/s1600/cw_150_700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="453" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MCCJz2058NY/XIjuY2ccaqI/AAAAAAAAE_Q/I-ztnZG3n7QUWt4hHINGcEHsPFb9McaqQCLcBGAs/s320/cw_150_700.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="https://ahaas.nl/">Arthur Haas</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>There’s lots of news in this March issue of <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/">Clarkesworld Magazine</a>, plus six new stories (five short stories and one novelette). Mainly, the publication will be adding more translations to its offerings, replacing reprints with new translations of Korean SFF. I trust this doesn’t mean that the Chinese translations will stop, though the current issue again doesn’t have a translation. What is here are some stories that deal very poignantly and viscerally with grief, with oppression, and with people reaching out to other people. That finds people dealing with loss in very profound ways but working through those losses to try and find community, or joy, or love, or purpose. The stories feature moments great and small of people starting something, taking a chance and sparking change. And life. And hope. So without further delay, let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“But, Still, I Smile” by <b>D.A. Xiaolin Spires</b> (8332 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Dengwen is a data analyst working with SETI, and a person who has struggled with trying to conceive and carry a child to term. Who has perhaps given up, just as many seem to have given up on the planet as a whole, hoping to find some salvation in space, from another sentient civilization. Only that hope is slim and fragile, made bold by a promising lead but still with years to find out if it might be salvation or ruin. The piece is slow and contemplative, draining in the sense that Dengwen’s life is a sort of fighting retreat, trying always despite the odds and dangers to have a child that won’t seem to come. Bent toward that one thing and all the complex feelings that come with it. It’s a somewhat startling read, damaged by the weight of everything falling apart and maybe, despite everything, coming back together anyway.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> CW- Miscarriage/Pregnancy, Space, Aliens, Blood, First Contact</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>The story does a very good job at conveying this almost numb hope that keeps Dengwen going. This drive toward having a child, which is such a complicated thing with the extinction of humanity looming. Looming not because of the necessity to reproduce, though, but because of the near futility of it. That having a child might be just dooming that child to the end of the world. Throw into the mix that Dengwen seems incapable of having a child, that she’s miscarried and despite her best efforts had no luck in conceiving since. The sweeping action of the story, the thrust into space and the subsequent arrival on an alien world, is almost muted next to the strained hope that maybe she can still have a child, that it’s not out of reach. The mission itself echoes this, the ship in some ways like her body, with this great mission and great potential, but as she sees it at the end of the day it’s mostly just empty. A floating barren cage of metal. It’s how I feel the story makes her feel, like she can never really reach what she wants personally just as professionally her mission finds no cure, finds no salvation from an alien race. And yet. And yet I think the story shows that failure there doesn’t mean that all hope has to be lost. For me it’s a rather dark story because of the loss that she feels, because she can find no real meaning outside of having a child, and that drive never sublimates into something different. But the result of it is a little more nebulous. It’s her desire that ends up kickstarting something. Something that maybe should have been left dormant, that maybe is dangerous and deadly. But that maybe is beautiful and powerful all the same. That maybe is alive all the same, and it does seem to help give people direction and purpose and something to work for. But yeah, it’s a strange read and a somewhat haunting experience that I definitely think people should spend some time with!</div><div><br /></div><div>“When Home, No Need to Cry” by <b>Erin K. Wagner</b> (3614 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Karen is an astronaut who has been grounded by a cancer that seems linked perhaps to an incident she had in space. In an institution and sick, nearing death, she has the chance to think about her life and the end of it and what she wants from it. The piece is heavy with the weight of expectation, the way that death seems to to forgo any pretense of stalking her. Instead it’s walking slowly toward every day, measuring her up, and then walking on again. The piece is about how a person can meet the end, and really about how they can <i>choose</i>&nbsp;to meet the end, on their own terms instead of those dictated by chance, illness, and doctors.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Space, CW- Cancer, Hospitalization, Escape, Insubordination, Stowaway, Death</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I like how the story grounds Karen here when really that’s the last thing she wants. For me it gets at the idea of recovery and hope and life. Because for Karen it’s not really life if it means being stuck in an institution. And yet for everyone else it’s something that they take as a matter of course. Of course she must want to get treated because who doesn’t want to live? It’s healthy to want to live so that must be a good above all else. And yet for Karen what’s healthy and what’s not isn’t so straight forward. She knows that she’s dying but in some ways I feel she’s dying either way, and the real thing that concerns her is how and where. Because she’s an astronaut. Because she belongs up there in the clear black of space, pushing out against the pressure pushing her back toward Earth. Because she wants to meet that great unknown out there, doing what she loves, rather than running from it. Rather than hiding from it, waiting for it to find her in a hospital bed. There’s something alive about being able to go and be out there, and even if it kills her that’s how she wants to live and I like that the story makes room for that, finds in it some triumph even as it’s also rather heartbreaking. It’s a delicate read, powerful and rending and very good!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Death of an Air Salesman” by <b>Rich Larson </b>(4645 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> In something of a cyberpunk romance, Maya is an air seller going through life like everyone else—a bit desperately. Hope isn’t an easy thing to come by in a place that monetizes everything, that squeezes people in every way they can be squeezed. But one day she sees a man with a scarf who seems to take some of the weight of life off of her. They meet. And the rest is a rather sweet story that seems to take a look at what romance in the age of rampant exploitation and technology and scarcity. It looks at all the ways that people can be turned into something like labor drones, and all the ways they can’t be, which is rather beautiful even as it’s rather dark as well.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Air, Work, Art, Dating, Employment</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>Or maybe I should call it a cyberpunk fairytale. About a man and a woman finding each other despite the difficulties, despite all the ways that it’s not supposed to work in this setting, in this world where time is money and relationships are, at best, a distraction. Where people don’t have the same training for them, because their lives have always been about time and working and maximizing their output. But for Maya and Dima there seems to be a little bit of hope. Something to reach for. Ways that working together can make things easier and better for both of them. In many ways I think it can be read as a rather classic fairy tale, with it’s happily every after, but I think that it holds enough of a bite to question and subvert that, as well. Because the story pulls away but without the assurance that they’ll really be able to make whatever they have work long term. Because in that world nothing really is supposed to work long term. It works until their bodies begin to break down, until they can’t make their production goals, and then it begins to decline, and to spiral, because that what this setting seems to do. And in the end there’s the feeling that maybe they will have enough. Maybe they’ll make it and find something to work, and always find some way to work, but the promise of the happy ending is one that I feel carries this important caveat, this question for the reader to answer. Of how much they’re willing to accept. Of how much they’ll let this romantic ideal make them think that the setting isn’t all bad. And what is that if not a bit of romance like the air advert? Something to get people to keep going and not think that this all needs to change, needs to see a massive reorganization because it’s wrong? For me it’s a sharp story that works in this layered way, where the romance is sweet and fun and joyous but it’s doing something else darker and much more subversive as well. A fantastic read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Dreams Strung like Pearls Between War and Peace” by <b>Nin Harris</b> (6776 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Raneka is the granddaughter of a revolutionary, a man who was at the heart of a great many plots and who helped a great many people fight back against the empire he was a part of. it made him a lot of enemies, and it lost him Raneka’s affections, for it set her on a path to try and reject his teachings and his mission. Or so she thought. Reality has been muddled by manipulation and false memories, though, and the story explores the fallout from that, and the devastating effectiveness of wars fought in ballrooms and drawing rooms. The piece is fun and tightly plotted, so very poised at the edge of ruin and Raneka having to make tough decisions and trust her instincts to guide her where her memories have betrayed her. It’s a dash of intrigue, a spoonful of revenge, and a heaping helping of shit hitting the fan in this story of ballgowns and powder kegs.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Parties, Memories, Family, Spies, Insurrection</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I always love returning to this setting and all its myriad strangenesses. It’s something I wish I had a map to (and okay, okay, what I probably wish more is that I had a collection I could hold and go through all at once), but that in many ways doesn’t need one, because the actions in each story stand on their own. Here is a story of a legacy stolen, of a family splintered when it should not have been. Because Raneka has been manipulated and coerced, controlled in some deeply disturbing ways. Not because she was physically violated but because she was psychically violated into betraying herself and her family. Into turning her back on her grandfather and losing the chance to know him better. And I love that so much is motivated by that, by the insidious and violent ways that the empire works. If it had left Raneka alone she might have still sought to avoid conflict, and might have been able to succeed. With their interference, though, they pushed her in the opposite direction, to see the evil that she had been avoiding and decide at last to face it the only way she can, by turning the tables on those that would have used her for murder and intrigue. It’s not exactly a triumphant piece, seeing as how it plunges the setting into war, but it’s one that recognizes that there are some peaces that are worse than some wars, some status quos that must be fought against, lest their victims pile higher than the casualties from any battlefield. And I do just like the mix of “high society” and revolution on display here, the resilience and resourcefulness that Raneka shows in finally embracing the mantle that her grandfather left for her—that of revolutionary. An excellent read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Treasure Diving” by <b>Kai Hudson</b> (3246 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Ilana is a kind of aquatic humanoid who has just lost her mother to a wasting sickness caused by the radiation that comes from her people’s dependence on a material called <i>hypera</i>&nbsp;for energy. It’s a valuable commodity but a toxic one, and despite the dangers Ilana and her sister are out in the deepest depths hunting for it so that they might be able to move into a new home farther from the heart of the energy reactors where the radiation is worst. Of course, there are things other than valuable and mysterious treasures out there in the deep... The piece is full of loss and a omnipresent darkness. Ilana’s hope has been battered, all her prospects dimmed in the face of a future of merely getting by until falling sick or watching more around her fall sick, and this grim and solemn tone is only broken by frantic and thrilling action resolving into something like the dawning of new hope.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Siblings, Loss, Under Water, Mer-People, Radiation, Adaptation</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love the world that the story introduces, but also the mix of styles that it manages to capture. It’s slow in many ways, about the decay that Ilana observes around her, the threat of succumbing to the wasting illnesses brought on by the radiation. And even as she knows that it well could be fatal, Ilana’s still out there, exposing herself further, because she knows that it’s the only way for her to get even a little bit of security for herself and her sister. Even so it’s a bleak sort of hope, and it shows in the way that the grief pull at her, hinders her like her suit, making her sluggish. And then, of course, things kick right into a sort of horrific action, where the darkness of the depths comes alive with malevolence and tries its best to end her, giving her the option of just accepting the inevitable or fighting back against it, striving not just to survive but to find a reason to go further, to find reason to think that the situation will actually improve. And it’s a rather thrilling ride, fun and exhilarating and yet emotionally striking as well, and I appreciate the way it layers hopes, treasures, and especially darknesses giving way to light. The voice is strong and compelling, and despite the distinct fantasy (or fantastical science fiction) setting, the feeling is definitely one that I understand. I’m not sure that the kind of adaptation that she notices is always possible in all situations, but I do think it shows that there is hope, that maybe through a different kind of dark there is a light waiting where Ilana and her people can adapt to the radiation they must endure to function as a civilization. There’s certainly a lot that can go wrong there, but I like that the story focuses on the need to know that it going right is also possible, in order to keep hope alive. A wonderful story!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Thing With the Helmets” by <b>Emily C. Skaftun </b>(5154 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Helga is a derby girl. That, really, is the heart of things. Pushed to join a sport by parents who didn’t “approve” of her weight, she finally settled into derby and in some ways it became her home. Her family. Even when (while she was on the junior team) the senior team all perished because of an unspeakable evil. Even when the entire planet is overrun by aliens bent on invasion. The piece explores that with gusto and energy, with a rather charming voice and a great sense of fun. It’s a piece that doesn’t take itself too seriously, mixing aliens and eldritch horrors with superpowers and kicking ass, but at the same time there is a lot here about belonging, bodies, anger, and the pressure to conform.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Roller Derby, Aliens, Magic, Superpowers, Sports, Invasion</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>As said, this is a deeply weird story. As a fan of roller derby, though, it’s also a deeply fun story about a young woman becoming more comfortable with who she is. The piece, for all it’s a bit wacky, is not without a heavy dose of darkness, both in the form of all the gruesome death, and also in the more “normal” ways that Helga deals with people putting her down and making assumptions about her. Trying to get her to fit into something that she doesn’t want, that doesn’t feel right. The story is about a world that is wildly outside of her control, that is full of dangers and where she feels like there really isn’t much she can do. Except that there’s a power that allows her to fight back. To do something good. To be powerful and in control. Well...sort of. I like the way the story plays with the idea of control, that once Helga and the others put on the helmets, there’s this danger because it’s a corrupting influence. That it makes them want to take it too far because it finally gives them this full outlet for their rage and frustration and it feels so good to give into that. And yet at the same time they’re doing harm to more than just the alien menace, and even with the aliens they are being brutal in a way that does kinda make them a different kind of bad guy, even if they’re using against other bad guys. Its a complicated situation, because as much as derby gave her a place to belong and an outlet for some of her anger, it doesn’t fix the underlying issues. It doesn’t mean that people treat her better. There’s no amount of assertiveness or confidence that really insulates people (and especially women) from people wanting more, wanting them always to be perfect and skinny and proper. And even an alien invasion doesn’t really stop that. But I do like that she stops from giving into her rage fully, because even as she knows that it’s still bullshit that she has to deal with her mother’s disapproval and criticism still, she trusts herself to navigate it and keep looking for ways to be happy and make a difference. A fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-4745916226544710522019-03-12T04:52:00.001-07:002019-03-12T04:52:53.730-07:00Quick Sips - The Dark #46<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXsitTqww1o/XIedT6MD1QI/AAAAAAAAE_E/b9YsxqDynjU8-G-74iuNfQcZeM-zPLKlACLcBGAs/s1600/TheDark46-220x340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXsitTqww1o/XIedT6MD1QI/AAAAAAAAE_E/b9YsxqDynjU8-G-74iuNfQcZeM-zPLKlACLcBGAs/s320/TheDark46-220x340.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by grand failure</td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>It’s a strange month at <a href="http://thedarkmagazine.com/issues/march-2019/">The Dark Magazine</a>, with two original stories that take some very novel approaches to some rather tried and true subjects for dark SFF—mummies and science. These are pieces that don’t really retread ground, though, instead blazing very new interpretations on the ideas and tropes they tackle. The results are stories that are anything but expected, that are fun and mysterious and weird. And before I give any more away, let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“After Life” by <b>Shari Paul</b> (4701 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Set is a mummy. Like in the movies. Cursed to never die and even if he did make it to the underworld, to be devoured there as punishment for...something. The thing is, he doesn’t really remember. And he’s never had the chance to try and find out more. That is, until he’s brought back in the Twenty-First Century by a man hungry for power and corporate dominance, who hopes to use Set as a weapon against all those who stand against him. Then things start to change, and Set has the opportunity to maybe break the cycle of the curse that has plagued him for so long. The piece is something of a monster story but also about the ways that Set is nothing like the mummies of the movies, and really very tired of being used. And it’s about the ways that he uses the tools available to him in order to reach toward freedom.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Mummies, Resurrection, Magic, Assassins, Memories, Names</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a fun story, charming even as it plays with the classic horror staple of the mummy. Because Set is not, despite his name, set in his ways. He’s able to learn and to change, to see the world around him and grow with it. Personally I love all the little details of the story, the way that he actually watches mummy movies, the way that he reads fanfiction, the way that adapts so easily to the internet. Part of what makes these monsters monsters so often is that they come from this Other Time and Place and it makes them seem strange. But Set is not stuck in the past, really. He embraces what the present offers and appreciates all the ways that no one expects him to. It allows him to be much shrewder than people might think, and ultimately I like that it’s his ability to keep with the times that really sets him free. Contrasting that is his “master”, O, who is a businessman and an asshole. Who uses Set to kill rivals and is so frightened of death that he decides he wants what Set has, even knowing that it’s a curse. Making O conservative here shows that it’s that brand of conservatism that’s really more backward-gazing. That it’s O who is stuck in the past and has something of a difficult time adjusting. Who doesn’t want change because he’s comfortable and powerful as things are. And it’s what makes him weak, and ultimately what leads to his downfall, which is a wonderful moment that the story manages with action and a certain grim satisfaction. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Modern Science” by <b>Nelson Stanley</b> (4725 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> The main character of this story is a patient man, perhaps because he is good at waiting, and perhaps because he is getting treatment from an unknown malady from a Doctor of perhaps dubious talents. The piece is incredibly strange, focusing on the ways that the patient man can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong with him, interrupted by the odd methods of the Doctor and his practice. The piece is a bit thick and viscous, like honey, pulling in a way that is hard to define. For that, though, it offers up a singular experience, weaving the patient man through these obscure and rather creepy treatments in search of a cure for something that’s never even very clear to begin with.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Doctors, Treatment, Memories, Honey, Queer MC</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>There is a part of me that wants to just write “well this was really weird” and leave it at that, because that’s probably the most accurate review I could give. It’s a piece that for me defies a lot of conventional approaches because it seems to me to be about the attempt to define something that might be undefinable. That in shaping this story around a man who wakes and finds himself Not Well, and all of the attempts to “fix” him using some rather extreme methods, the story is really engaging in something of a critique of the drive not for knowledge of scientific understanding but the lack of room given for the unknown and the unknowable. And to imply perhaps that sometimes the anxiety of finding a cause and an “proper explanation” can become its own kind of malady, and one that can only be “solved” by letting it go and finding something in the moment to get away from the fear and the worry and the doubt. That sometimes some fairly “unscientific” answers are the ones that are most successful at alleviated mysterious symptoms. Because it steps back from the need to prescribe and diagnose and focuses instead on what is happening on a different level, to try and find a context for the problem that doesn’t require science at all in order to work through it. For me, the piece is a weird kind of romp, unsettling in how the patient man submits himself to all of these strange treatments because he just wants to be better, not realizing until much later that it might not be a clinical answer he’s looking for. And it’s weird and rather fun and definitely worth spending some time with! A fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-1146973350071541612019-03-11T03:40:00.001-07:002019-03-11T03:40:01.107-07:00Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online March 2019<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VP1zGwsZkc8/XIY6z4P6aII/AAAAAAAAE-4/ricxYuzUJ8A4OWmTtF_K0znbZr7NXvYVACLcBGAs/s1600/FlashFictionOnlineMarch2019Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VP1zGwsZkc8/XIY6z4P6aII/AAAAAAAAE-4/ricxYuzUJ8A4OWmTtF_K0znbZr7NXvYVACLcBGAs/s320/FlashFictionOnlineMarch2019Cover.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by Dario Bijelac</td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Loss anchors the stories of March’s <a href="http://flashfictiononline.com/main/issues/march-2019/">Flash Fiction Online</a>. Loss and yearning and something dark and oppressive. For some, the loss is of identity, or family. For some, the darkness is a totalitarian regime, or an abusive parent, or death itself. And in each characters must struggle to find something that makes dealing with the darkness worth it. Music. Desire. Ghosts. The sad thing about the stories is that none of the characters seem entirely successful in escaping their darknesses. But there’s still some hope to be had. And plenty of good reading. So let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Pianissimo” by <b>Chelsea Hanna Cohen</b> (989 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> The story is told from the first person plural, not a royal we but a more intimate one, following a group, a family, as they seek to avoid being taken by a regime that has outlawed music. The piece, short as it is, still does a powerful job of conveying what it means for the family—their connection to the music which is part of their identity, their desperation to not be taken away and lose all they have, and the cruelty of this regime which is obviously demanding that they either erase themselves and embrace the law or else be broken so as not to present any kind of “threat.” It’s a wrenching read, though I feel one that also deals with hope and survival, resistance and subversion.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Music, Prisons, Punishment, Hiding, Memory</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> The premise of the story is a strong one for me, that music could be this physical thing for this family, that it could be so tied to their identity and as such targeted for removal by a regime hoping to sell a vision of a kind of sameness, a safety that only exists when We all share the same traditions, tastes, and outlooks. That the We of the story exists as a group denotes their outside status from the regime, and marks their doom when it comes to trying to hide their nature. Because it goes deeper than the songs, deeper than the obvious things that the regime has outlawed. They hope that if they pass enough they can fool inspection, not quite wanting to accept that for the regime it’s not enough to pass. It’s not enough to pay lip service to the sins they author. They require active participation in order to share the burden of those sins and make everyone as culpable as the worst believer. So it’s heartbreaking but not really surprising when the family is found out and imprisoned. When what they feared comes to pass. Only it doesn’t quite break them. It doesn’t make them loyal or docile. Instead, it teaches them that there is no point in trying to play along. That they need to embrace their songs. Their music. To try and snatch something back from the hungry jaws of oppression and injustice. And it makes for a fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Circle, Circle, Circle, Slash” by <b>Jason A. Zwiker </b>(980 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Eli is a boy with a mother rather preoccupied with sin and the Devil. So when Eli and a friend seem to get close in a way she fears is inappropriate, well...things get a bit weird. The story is heavy with the weight of Eli’s troubles, his precarious position of wanting to reassure his mother and love his mother while being drawn to the things that she frames as sin. It shows the way he is pushed to hide who he might be, as well as the trauma that leaves him confused about sin and salvation, the devil as desirable as opposed to the devil his mother sees. And throughout always is the fear, the vulnerability, that Eli is mostly on his own against the more real threat in his life, not the devil but his own mother.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Growing Up, Friends, Teeth, Parenting, Sin, The Devil</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> There’s a lot to take in with this rather dark flash story. And personally I do read Eli as queer in some way, and read how his mother is treating him a way that she’s hoping that he’ll hate himself and stop himself from exploring that part of himself. At the same time, I don’t think that he’s necessarily queer, because he’s a kid and friendships can just look like this, full of things that would make adults Think Things because the context is different for children. Either way, it does a very good job at looking how parental abuse can work and how it can shroud itself as concern, as religious devotion, in such a way that it’s very hard to see what’s really happening, what’s really at stake. It’s easy to see that concern that she seems to be expressing as meaning that she cares about him, when really she cares about herself and keeping him with her. I like how the story drives that home, too, showing that the whole point is getting him to assure her that he’ll stay, that he’ll be good, that he’ll be what she wants him to be, when really he’s at the point where the words leave his mouth but don’t really mean that much. Because he’d say anything to avoid the punishment, the mental torture that she’s putting him through. It’s a harrowing read, rull of darkness and the sense that Eli is constantly walking a minefield waiting for his mother to explode at him. It’s wrenching and it’s quite good, and well worth checking out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Plea for a Haunting” by <b>Ray Yanek</b> (570 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Danny splits his time between visiting his brother and visiting old buildings. Both are rituals of sorts, though the former is newer in light of his brother’s hospitalization and the former is now tinged with the feelings and griefs of that reality. The story follows Danny as he remembers his brother, as he seeks something among the derelict constructions he visits. It’s a piece full of yearning and a broken kind of hope. Something between resignation and desperation, all of Danny’s efforts twisting around this impending thing he doesn’t want to face, that’s coming all the same and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It’s, in a rather appropriate case, a haunting read.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Ghosts, Hospitals, Recordings, Siblings, Illness</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>Okay so I might be into ghost hunting and in that sense this is a neat story, because it features a pair of brothers who seem to have bonded over this. Or where the younger brother, at least, the sick one, wants to find a ghost. A haunting. Which is so very real and raw, because it’s something that might give him hope. That death is not the end of things. That he’s not going to have to leave. That maybe he and his brother can continue doing things together. And in that way Danny wants to believe as well, though with a different kind of urgency. For me at least Danny seems to be the older brother to the end, there, not really caring himself but wanting this thing for his brother, wanting to help him fulfill this one wish before the end. And so he goes out again and again with his recording tech and tries to find something that neither of them seem really hopeful about finding. Because it gives them something to do and focus on that isn’t the reality of the illness and decline. The terminal nature of the situation. And the breaking of the kind of compact that comes with siblings and with age. Because it’a always unexpected for a younger sibling to die first. And so both brothers are afraid and hurting, trying to hold onto the memories they have of each other, of their past and their hopes. And yeah, it’s an emotional knockout, going right for the feeling and hitting home to devastating effect. It’s sad and beautiful, a fragile and lovely and lonely exploration of a grief that hasn’t quite arrived and yet is already being felt by both brothers. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-72421912870581170012019-03-08T06:11:00.002-08:002019-03-08T06:11:22.812-08:00Quick Sips - Lightspeed #106<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oRyKrWuVCE0/XIJ379UGEKI/AAAAAAAAE-o/y9IY5jcN54w7Yi7_u_HPGA5g1w8b_H1PgCLcBGAs/s1600/th_364f27d0a9e0903ba4ca66b270091c81_lightspeed_106_march_201938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oRyKrWuVCE0/XIJ379UGEKI/AAAAAAAAE-o/y9IY5jcN54w7Yi7_u_HPGA5g1w8b_H1PgCLcBGAs/s320/th_364f27d0a9e0903ba4ca66b270091c81_lightspeed_106_march_201938.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by Grandfailure / Fotolia</td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>March often means spring and new beginnings but a lot of the stories in this month’s <a href="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/issues/mar-2019-issue-106/">Lightspeed Magazine</a> are a bit more about grief and yearning. Which hey, might be very appropriate for some, like me, who are so desperate for spring we’d burn our favorite Garak trading card if only it would make the winter stop. The stories often linger on distance, and on parting. On loneliness and fear and all the negative emotions that we try to vanquish in order to be happy. More than that, though, they also reach for hope and joy, and reveal some characters who manage to grab something precious and affirming and some characters who…don’t. To the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“On the Shores of Ligeia” by <b>Carolyn Ives Gilman</b> (7220 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Seth is the assistant to a big-time professor in Stockholm, where his department is finally going to get some time in “control” of a rover on the surface of Titan. Really none of them will truly be in control, the rover’s movements being driven by a complex AI model, but Seth’s boss is supposed to help to guide it. Only she broke her leg, and so it falls to Seth to step up to the plate. The piece for me is very much about family, and about learning. About risk and about freedom and about stepping away from the expected when it comes to space travel. Reimagining how humanity should step out among the stars, and who should be among those to do that, and in what ways. It’s a piece that looks at curiosity and wonder, at disaster and recovery, and it’s a lot of fun.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Space, Exploration, Drones, Games, Family</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love how the story shows Seth stuck between the desire to play by the rules when it comes to space and his frustration that the rules are written to be so conservative. To be risk-averse. Which makes complete sense when dealing with human lives, and human exploration. But when dealing with rovers and tech, with money rather than people, it’s something that seems to get in the way a bit. And I love that the story shows these very different takes on the issue of space exploration. Where in the story the American strategy is one of putting people into space, of going out and conquering, essentially. And the EU instead is working for allowing humans to experience space, to immerse in that environment. And China, meanwhile, has gone one further, and made the process open to most everyone. So that even children get to play a “game” of exploration, and in doing so get help in shaping what it is to explore and to be out in the solar system. It’s a piece that has this wonderful sense of excitement to it, that curiosity that goes along with exploration, the desire not to conquer but to know and understand. And it settles on the knowledge that there are things that have to be risked for that, because without the risk a great deal can be missed. And yes, the rover is worth a lot of money, a lot of labor, but it’s labor for a reason, a dream made real and if it stops short of reaching out and grabbing that dream, it’s not exactly money well spent either. So yeah, it’s a fun and sweet story and a fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“My Children’s Home” by <b>Woody Dismukes </b>(4460 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> The narrator of this story is a father, a person who seems to oversee the raising of children in a rather sterile, school-like atmosphere, each child being prepared for a future that they know nothing about. That even the narrator knows nothing about. Only that they won’t see each other again. It makes this like intimacy a difficult thing to build. And yet it might also make it the more beautiful and fragile when it is formed, more defining and deep. The piece is wrenching and often difficult, the setting not exactly defined but rather concealed by a veil. By the strangeness of what’s revealed and the bleakness and loneliness of everything. It’s a moving story about longing and deprivation.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Parenting, School, Queer MC, Correspondence, Roles, CW- Slavery</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This is a beautifully emotional story that for me centers a cycle of hurt and longing. Where people are raised in isolation and longing only to help others be raised in the same way. When what they want is something to break through the distance and sterile coldness of their environment and bring a taste of something sweet and wonderful. It’s something the narrator has almost forgotten, but not quite, because he remembers his own childhood and the intimacy he shared with another boy before their Auction, before they were separated forever. And he sees in the young people of his care a similar connection. One that he doesn’t want to break, because he can feel so keenly the joy of it, the hope of it. But one that he cannot save, either, because he could not even save himself. Because in the end there seems nothing he can do about it. The setting here is deeply oppressive, a sort of assembly line where people don’t have personal identity. But where some can have some help forming one with someone else. Where they can connect and build something that helps them feel and escape the narrow confines of their world. It’s a difficult read I say in part because for all that it’s beautiful it’s also absolute. There is no real sense of rebellion of fighting back. There is no urge to even really rebel. There’s a broken kind of sorrow to it that is moving and real, if not entirely happy. But I do very much appreciate how the piece takes on intimacy and oppression, loneliness and control. It’s a tender and heartbreaking read and definitely deserves some time and attention!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Self-Storage Starts with the Heart” by <b>Maria Romasco Moore</b> (5990 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> James lives a life mostly to himself but mostly centered around his best friend, Christopher, who now has a wife and child and no time to spend playing the miniature war game that sustained them through college. James is left with his loneliness, something that he’s seen it advertised that places can take away. For a price. Not able to afford the bottom line, James seeks to get creative in fixing his problem, and in doing so might stumble into some new ones. The piece is draining and rather dark, about the suffocating fog that James finds himself in and his desperation to find relief from it. And for me it’s a piece with some interesting things to say about relief and emotions, and friendship and desire as well.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Emotions, Friendship, Loneliness, Business, Queer MC(?)</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I really like the idea of being able to store “negative” emotions. Because in many ways that seems like such a needed thing, especially when they can lead to spiraling Bad Brain and make doing anything to feel better impossible. And here I like that James is in this abusive friendship relationship and how storing his emotions really helps him to see and deal with that. That said, I’m not sure I like personally that James might be queer and <i>in love</i>&nbsp;with Christopher, not because I don’t want to read that but because the story never really brings James to a place where that queerness can be accepted or separated from the negative emotions that he feels. That and I just have complicated fears about desire and sexuality within male friendships (and it’s possible that I’m misreading the reveal about the relationship towards the end, and James doesn’t mean romantic or sexual love, and then again I might be too close in some ways to this idea, because of my own complicated feelings about friendships, queerness, and masculinity). I’m actually really interested in the ideas that story brings up about the stigma around getting help for things that most people assume require only mental discipline or some such. James is essentially anxious and depressed and treatment for that costs money that he doesn’t have. Despite the fact that storing his loneliness actually does help him to feel better, it’s not really framed as bad of him to do it for most of the story. There was a sense for me at least that though the commercial aspect of it is a bit morally suspect, the idea that some people could benefit from having their loneliness and rage taken away is a compelling one. Because why not? I feel that often it gets framed that it’s somehow morally righteous to “just deal with” negative emotions or else “work through them” with some sort of professional but the focus is rarely on how capitalism makes it impossible for those without means to really get help. And it doesn’t face that without the help, there’s often no way for the people who need help to get to a place they could afford it. In some ways this seemed like a genuinely good thing that James was doing, though I do see how locking these things away might lead to avoiding some things that it’s best not to avoid. However, given our system, our world, I cannot fault anyone for doing what James did. That it all sort of falls apart, to me, is almost disappointing because it puts him back in a place where he’s pushed to just deal with his issues without help or relief, when it was the relief of them being gone that allowed him to break what was a rather addictive and abusive relationship he had with Christopher. So I’m a little conflicted about my reading of the ending, even as I think the story does a great job of exploring its premise. For me, it might be one to revisit, because I definitely think it merits some careful consideration. So do go check it out and see what you think!</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Hundred Thousand Arrows” by <b>Ashok K. Banker</b> (11890 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Picking up where the last story left off, Vrath has vowed to remain celibate in order to honor his father’s new marriage and the heirs he would produce. Which, in turn, are produced, and Vrath gains two half-brothers. Their stories aren’t perhaps as storied as his, though, and as the piece progresses the main focus is on Vrath’s adventure in trying to procure for one of them a wife (well, wives in this case). It’s an installment that dives into the rituals of marriage and exposes much of their barbarity. For that, it’s also a rather thrilling chase and action sequence that carries a strange but awe-inspiring cinematic flare. And it’s drawing on traditions outside of the dominant Western narrative, which means playing with gender roles and systems that are rather...archaic, but in ways that I think still leave room for fun.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Marriage, Competition, Archery, Treachery, Combat</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>The story of Vrath continues, and a part of me is curious to see how many people might seek to put a label on the character like Gary Stu, because Vrath is essentially perfect, more than mortal, and shows it off to good effect here. In some ways it’s to the point where there’s not exactly a sense of danger for him, because he seems able to survive so much. But I like what this series has done and continues to do with that, making so many of his challenges not about his physical prowess, but rather about his ability to make judgments and calls that speak more to his wisdom than his brawn. And here I see a lot woven not into how awesome he is with a bow (while driving a chariot, sometimes with his eyes closed), but also how much he’s layering, building this trust between himself and the women he has indeed kidnapped. Not because he’s happy about the tradition that allows him to “capture a bride” but because he knows he can use that in order to show them that he can be trusted. And there is just that edge of hurt at some of this, the echoes of his terrible vow from the last part. At the same time, the piece also rushes over some areas that I might have wanted to see more of, striking through a great number of years of loss and perhaps grief in order to linger here on this admittedly action-packed romp. Part of me guesses it’s because of the way it leaves things still focused on the oath, and if Vrath is really going to honor it, while the other part wonders what’s in store next for this demigod and his trials. A fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-52612414488204985582019-03-07T06:49:00.000-08:002019-03-07T06:49:01.527-08:00Quick Sips - Serial Box: Ninth Step Station [episodes 7-8]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uvs5OrRHnns/XCYRYSiM0iI/AAAAAAAAE2w/ccS1p2Un4sAmLxPQYCiQvHqRivDdkVo1ACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/9SS_tall_placeholder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1235" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uvs5OrRHnns/XCYRYSiM0iI/AAAAAAAAE2w/ccS1p2Un4sAmLxPQYCiQvHqRivDdkVo1ACPcBGAYYCw/s320/9SS_tall_placeholder.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><div><i>Things are certainly heating up in the latest episodes from <a href="https://www.serialbox.com/serials/ninth-step-station?ref=ninthstepquicksip">Serial Box’s Ninth Step Station</a>, with plenty of murder, yes, but also a widening scope and political scene, with politicians and terrorists both making life much harder for Miyako and Emma. There’s some further exploration of each characters romantic lives, as well as plenty of office politics to go along with the global politics they’re trying to keep from exploding back into war. And the series continues to hit its television-like feel, with one “Emma episode” and one “Miyako episode” that give a little each character the chance to grow and be challenged. So let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Loud Politician” by <b>Fran Wilde</b> (serial episode 7)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> So following the fake kidnapping last episode, this one finds Miyako and Emma called out to a spot of what seems to be arson. Arson and murder of a rather prominent member of the Japanese Diet, one who was loud in pushing for stricter punishments for foreign mischief. It makes the mystery seem rather poltically motivated, and that’s one area that Emma and Miyako don’t exactly excel. For Emma especially, her brash American style of doing things really doesn’t mesh all that well with the more formal setting she finds herself in, especially because the formality is a coping mechanism for many of the people around her whose home has been so thoroughly changed and damaged by the war. So it’s something of an episode of Emma Fucking Up and then seeing that she has to come at things a little differently, not being untrue to herself but learning to be less of a weapon and more of a detective. It’s a very interesting move and I like the way that this then gets some into the double standards surrounding gender and power and all of that. It’s a complex installment, but another good one!</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Murder, Mysteries, Breakups, Politics, CW- Domestic Violence/Abuse, Queer MC</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> Okay so a few things. First, yay Emma broke up with Kensuke! Dude keep on throwing up red flags and finally she’s seeing them clearly and Fed Up with his bullshit. Yay. Part of that too gets into the way that he diminishes her job and her aspirations while still very much feeling in control and in power. He’s the guide, the expert, and she’s the tourist. It’s a power imbalance that he’s quick to take advantage of, constantly framing any of her doubts about him and her needing to listen to him and obey because he knows best. It’s the same kind of behavior that makes her actions at work more fraught, because everything she does goes through that extra layer of being a woman, and so being aggressive isn’t seen the same way. Which is obviously something that she’s had to deal with and she’s learned how to handle by being more aggressive and more confident. Which worked with her American work (for the most part), and having to learn how that way of doing things isn’t going to work in Japan is frustrating for her. And to be clear, I feel it’s frustrating because she is aware that she’s an outsider and shouldn’t act like she knows best, while also seeing that misogyny is a problem here, and that she shouldn’t have to just accept that. It’s a very tricky situation but one the story pulls off so well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Secondly, I love how the case seems so obviously politically motivated (and in some ways is) that it gets everyone looking in the wrong place. That people are so sure that it must be some sort of assassination, because that is appropriately sinister and distant. And yet the reality is that the case follows pretty standard lines when it comes to murder. Was a woman killed? First thing, check out her partner. For this person, because she was a politician and because her husband was out of work, everyone just assumed that she had him...broken somehow. And yet the reality is that even people who seem certain of themselves can be victims of abuse. And that it remained invisible so long, when she was so loud and so visible, is the real mystery. Of course, the solution there, too, isn’t very uncommon. Her pain was ignored because dealing with it would require dealing with misogyny and entitlement in a way that most men (and many women) actively and aggressively push back against. In some ways it’s a very sad episode, because of the way this all comes out and then...sort of fades. How there is a moment of recognition for what has happened, for this murdered woman, but the problems still remain. The assholes keep their jobs. The women still have to work harder for less respect and reward. The episode ends with another win for Miyako and Emma, but also with the lingering fear that all their hard work and sacrifice might come to nothing because some man or men feels threatened by them, and decides to try and ruin their lives (or end them). But it’s another fantastic addition to the world, and I am so happy that Emma dumped that chump. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Clawed Limb” by <b>J Koyanagi</b> (serial episode 8)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> It’s a mystery of a different color when Miyako and Emma are handed a case involving, well, a rebellious hand. More specifically, they are brought in to question a man claiming that it was him who attacked his girlfriend, injecting her with an unknown substance. Or, not exactly. It was his hand, gone rogue from the rest of his body. Which the pair are quick to dismiss, except that his isn’t the only incident, and as things escalate they quickly have to come to terms with the fact that the truth of the situation might be strange indeed...as well as deadly serious. It’s an episode that leans a bit more in the thriller direction, the actual mystery more about what the perpetrator wants rather than figuring out who he is. And it’s one that shakes the partners a bit, making them examine their own feelings about peace and war and everything in between.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Terrorism, Body Modification, Queer MC, Borders, Control</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I love that this episodes dives a bit more into Miyako’s relationship, the semi-casual-by-necessity thing that she has with her lover from the Chinese sector. And how they allowed these small moments of peace and intimacy amidst this larger struggle. And how all of that is really called into question with this episode. Not, mind you, in a way that really reflects on the relationship itself. I like that Miyako is a little grumpy just how well it works, and sometimes wishes she could have something a bit more, but at the same time I really like the shape of it and the ease of it and the lack of real drama. No, what really makes Miyako have to question what she’s doing is her work. Is the fact that while she’s enjoying this bit of peace, her world is still very much at war, if not quite openly. But there are people trying their best to kill, and to escalate the political situation. The perp in this story is one who is definitely giving absolutely everything of himself to the conflict. To “winning.” And it makes Miyako have to examine how she’s not doing the same. And I love that, because it’s something that feels so real, the intense desire for peace and a spot of relief in chaotic and dangerous times. And the guilt that comes along with it, despite that peace, that relief, being the only thing helping Miyako do her job and do it well. Because without those moments things would be so much worse, and Miyako would do a worse job, and yet there’s the doubt, the thought that maybe denying herself every happiness and joy would get her something in return. It’s so common and it does seem to really get to Miyako, who is normally so reserved.</div><div><br /></div><div>And this story doesn’t really get too much into the who-done-it aspect of the mystery, Though it takes them a while to find their lead suspect, once they find him it’s much more about figuring out his motive, his objective. And then with dealing with not really figuring it out in time. It’s tense, wit another chase and another situation where Miyako and a killer have to go face to face, toe to toe. And I do like that this one isn’t exactly a win for the team. I mean, they “get their guy,” but at the same time they have to face that in war men like this are seen as valuable. There won’t be justice for the people he killed and hurt. In some ways he’ll be rewarded with exactly what he wants, and it’s unsettling to think that’s the case, that war has made people so twisted that they’d think that was Okay. It also shows things are not going to just calm down in Tokyo. Though the desire is that somehow a peaceful solution can be found, chances are what’s coming is a continuation of the violence that led to this situation in the first place. And that specter of war, that has so far been a bit more distant, is much closer how that terrorism has caught fire. It’s an episode that does sell the stakes of this conflict, that these are more than just murder mysteries. They’re a battle for the soul of a city that has been deeply wounded. And it might be easier to abandon principles in the face of utility, but there is a lose there, something that cannot be reclaimed. And it’s another excellent read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-84648987874673399822019-03-06T05:44:00.000-08:002019-03-06T08:21:05.595-08:00Quick Sips - Serial Box: The Vela [episodes 3-4]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NRjA5o0G4QM/XHfJYrR5vuI/AAAAAAAAE-I/RlTauJVbF-EvzYO-RhgI7u73AVSKaYC4ACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/cover_tall-2fdf9e3b-2672-4711-aa38-7e4b594fcec3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1235" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NRjA5o0G4QM/XHfJYrR5vuI/AAAAAAAAE-I/RlTauJVbF-EvzYO-RhgI7u73AVSKaYC4ACPcBGAYYCw/s320/cover_tall-2fdf9e3b-2672-4711-aa38-7e4b594fcec3.jpg" width="246" /></a></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Today's the day! <a href="https://www.serialbox.com/serials/the-vela">The Vela is now available for your greedy eyeballs</a>! And people, it is so worth it.&nbsp; For those who missed it, <a href="http://quicksipreviews.blogspot.com/2019/02/quick-sips-serial-box-vela-episodes-1-2.html">I just reviewed the first two episodes</a>, and I’m back looking at the next two as the series continues to deliver when it comes to action, political intrigue, and all the power of a solar system’s slow demise. Where the first two parts focused on Asala and Niko’s personal reasons for taking the mission, these parts move into the actual hunt for the missing </i>Vela<i>, and all the danger and corruption surrounding what happened. In the outer planets, with extinction knocking on the door, there is a desperation that gives rise to predators. And Asala and Niko have to decide if that’s what they’re going to be, or if there’s another way to move foward. It’s thrilling, tense, and harrowing, and I should just get to my reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“[Title TK]” by <b>Rivers Solomon</b> (serial episode 3)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b><i>The Vela </i>has gone missing. It’s part of the hook of the series, but something that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention so far, with the larger concerns of assassination attempts and subterfuge taking up most of the real estate. With this third chapter, though, focus returns sharply to the transport ship carrying the last Eratosi refugees. It also turns to Asala and the planet she was forced to leave behind. The planet that is quickly running out of time in the face of falling temperatures and desperate conditions. Hypatia. It’s a chapter that mixes well the heavier elements of the story—corruption, genocide, and diaspora—with a nice sense of action and a quick banter, resulting in a story that builds back up to steam quickly following the short breath of last chapter.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Refugees, Prisons, Queer MC, Trans MC, Climate Change, Hacking</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> The story has done a great job slowly touching and then retreating from Asala’s relationship with Hypatia. She’s a refugee, a survivor—without much in the way of family or even strong connections to her home world. A world that is, after all, dying. It’s something that’s both always in her mind and something that she actively doesn’t think about. Because of the pain involved. Because of the loss. And I love how the opening of this episode grounds all of that in poetry, the thing that connects Asala to her sister. Who is supposed to be the main reason that Asala has come back to Hypatia. But who she spends most of her time not thinking about, because the mixture of guilt and shame. Which the episode does a great job of exploring through Asala’s feelings about the things she’s lost, her language and her family and all the things that really ground her to her planet. Even without those things, though, Hypatia distracts her, comforts her. There’s this complex push and pull and the story really conveys how Asala is torn here, all her old wounds reopened.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s also mostly an episode about trying to find out what happened to the missing ship, something that should be easy given how large the ship was, but which turns out to be next to impossible. Because Asala doesn’t have connections. Because Niko is even more of an outsider. They catch a break, but it requires them to take some chances and to make some promises. And it leads to quite a few twists and turns and shocks. Really, once the story really starts going, it’s a roller coaster of emotions and things happening. And it sets up a situation going forward where going home has led to no closure. Indeed, it’s brought her back to a situation where she’s leaving someone behind. Where she’s going to have to look at what she does next and who her loyalties are to. Is she an outsider, as she fears and often feels, who is just working a job of a foreign power? Or does she still owe something to her home, and to the people who are there, trying to make the best of the slow extinction? It is a wrenching experience and I can’t wait to see where it brings Asala’s character, and what it reveals about Niko.</div><div><br /></div><div>In turns of style, this episode also keeps things in Asala’s head. Where Niko has been a viewpoint in the previous two episodes, they’re mostly aloof here, though the revelations about the character at the end of episode two continue to inform their actions and paint them in some conflicting colors. It makes sense to focus on Asala here, though, on the world of her birth, and I love the painful quality it gives to the action. The way it reveals Asala wanting there to be time, to be something she can hold onto, that she can still call home, and finding instead that she’s pushed to betray it again and again. It’s a wonderful continuation of the serial, and an excellent read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Camp Ghala” by <b>SL Huang </b>(serial episode 4)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Camp Ghala orbits Gan-De, holding as many refugees fleeing the outer worlds as possible. With the political situation on Gan-De incredibly closed to immigrants from the outer planets, Ghala is a humanitarian crisis barely contained with tape, corruption, and hope. After nearly dying in their escape from Hypatia, this episode finds Niko and Asala arriving at Camp Ghala no better off than anyone else, having to balance the importance of their mission with the importance of the human life all around them. In Ghala they meet a slew of new characters, including Soraya, the woman who keeps the station mostly under control, though not without getting her own hands a bit dirty. It’s an episode that really questions what is important in this setting, when the entire solar system is on a decline, and human life is being lost every day, human tragedies paving all roads into the future.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Refugees, Terrorism, Compromises, Queer MC, Trans MC, Space Stations, CW- Rape/Child Abuse</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> After spending the entire previous chapter with Asala, this episode splits over four different characters, showing a wide range of experiences, none of them all that happy. The shock of the piece comes with the opening, where Asala remembers the fate of the ship that she and Niko used to get off Hypatia, decompressing in space before reaching its destination, Asala and Niko rescued with a mere fifth of the refugees. And I love how that hits them, how it puts an underline on the death that going on all the time. They are focused right now on a possible terrorist plot, but next to that is this quieter genocide that the inner planets get to author through their inaction. Through their turning away those fleeing their dying worlds, forced to take desperate measures because there is no safe choice. Niko especially feels this loss, feels the dissonance between their views on the crisis and the realities. That they have been wealthy and protected all their life comes home to roost, especially when contrasted against the lives of those at Ghala, like Ifa, a young boy who has had a very difficult journey in hopes of finding safety for himself and his sister.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not only that, but the episode also pushes the search for The Vela forward, with Asala and Niko making big steps in finding out what happened, though not exactly why. With the situation on the station deteriorating, and with their trust in Soraya tenuous, they find that what was already a complicated mess is even more twisted. And through this I feel like the episode lingers on morality, and what the right thing to do is when faced with extinction and pain and torture. It’s easy enough for Niko to think that they know right from wrong, wanting to believe that the refugees and aid workers are all doing good work, but like with all things it’s a bit more gray than that. Because in order to keep as many people alive as possible, Soraya has had to make some difficult decisions, and work with some unscrupulous people. But then, so have Niko and Asala, and it’s not like either of them haven’t gotten people killed, directly or indirectly. It’s not like anyone in this is innocent. Instead, everyone has their own missions, their own directives, and I love how the serial is exploring what that means. And I’m excited to see where that’s taking the characters, who for all they try not to care, really do want to help more than themselves. They do care, and I love how that care leads them forward, never offering an easy answer but always provoking them to dig deeper. What they’ll do when shit really starts hitting the fan, though, and all their secrets are laid bare...well, I’m not sure. But I can guess that it’s going to be awesome to read!</div><div><br /></div><div>And yeah, it’s another great installment of the series. I like how it pushes forward with the mystery and also dips back into what happened to Asala’s sister. It shows Niko and Asala mostly getting along, mostly working well together, though there isn’t quite the same banter as in some of the rest of the series. It’s a more visceral, bloody episode, defined from the start with tragedy and loss and trauma and seasoned as it moves forward with a moral labyrinth of laws, limited resources, and impending doom. It also amps up the foreboding, with a promise of Something Bad coming very quickly. A fantastic episode!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-42171934330965024292019-03-05T04:56:00.001-08:002019-03-05T04:56:38.228-08:00Quick Sips - Tor dot com February 2019<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HL_CwJoyJew/XH5xpSN0wZI/AAAAAAAAE-c/QspEoVVT7h0-4yfWUGcesZS0logpT-VpgCLcBGAs/s1600/oldmedia_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="706" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HL_CwJoyJew/XH5xpSN0wZI/AAAAAAAAE-c/QspEoVVT7h0-4yfWUGcesZS0logpT-VpgCLcBGAs/s320/oldmedia_full.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Art by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/soufiane.mengad">Soufiane Mengad</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Four works (three short stories and one novelette I kinda missed from the end of January) make for another full month of fiction from <a href="https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/">Tor dot com</a>. Further, all the stories are science fiction and most focused on the strength and fragility of relationships. They feature characters who are lonely, and who fear being alone, who are struggling against a culture that often doesn't care about them or their happiness, that wants them to bend to its desires and the fabricated needs of its demands. The pieces explore darkness, self destruction, and what peace looks like in a world that might not be full of war but is full of violence all the same, just a kind that is a bit more socially acceptable. And these are difficult, beautiful works that explore futures (and maybe a near-alt-historical past) that are broken, but not without hope. To the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Deriving Life” by <b>Elizabeth Bear</b> (9160 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> I will collect myself from the small puddle of tears I have become in a moment to try and describe this story, in which Marq is a person whose spouse, Tamar, is dying. But not suddenly or mysteriously—They’re dying from the sentient cancer that they chose to take into themself in part in order to enjoy relief from a chronic immune disorder that otherwise would have left them in constant pain. Tamar’s death has been something that Marq has known about from the start, and yet the prospect of living without their spouse is insurmountable. Shattering. And the piece explores that grief and pain and fear in a very compassionate, very moving way. And it builds Marq into a very complex, very damaged person who is moving through an incredibly difficult period of time and it feels so real, so raw, and so resonating.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Relationships, Grief, Therapy, CW- Cancer, CW- Suicidal Ideation</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a very difficult story for how it handles loss and grief and the fragility that can be identity and purpose. I love how the story captures Marq, so broken by what has happened, what they could essentially see coming and yet it hits like it’s a surprise, like they couldn’t have guessed it. And seeing the kind of weak support network they have is something real and deeply tragic, because they have lived so fully with their spouse. That they have become so much for each other, and now that things are ending, now that things must end, neither of them is handling it quite well. Because the truth seems to be that people can be both unwilling and entirely willing to die all at once, depending a lot on what they can hope for, what they can see in the future. They don’t want the beautiful thing they had to end, don’t want to face a future without them. And yet there is no escaping that, and it’s such a wrenching read, revealing how difficult it is to try and guess what will make a person feel better. What will make them want to live. And, in some ways, whether that should be the priority above all other things. And gah, it’s an emotionally devastating read, one that tore me down and tore me down as I descended with Marq into that despair and hurt and anguish. And I love that the story doesn’t end there, that it doesn’t dwell solely on the tragedy of the situation, but allows for the possibility of a future. One that will have to be renegotiated and reframed. One that still might come apart at any moment. But one that has a chance at moving forward and moving on. One that finds that Marq maybe hasn’t lost all of their progress over their time with Tamar just because Tamar is dying. And wow, it’s a story that hurts but hurts so good. Go read it!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Articulated Restraint” by <b>Mary Robinette Kowal </b>(5657 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Ruby is an astronaut, but also a bit of a dancer. Since the Meteor hit, her life has increasingly been filled with space and the training for it, but she’s always made time for dancing, for that connection to her life Before the Meteor. It’s a bit of nostalgia that she enjoys, and yet in this story she has to re-examine her decision to place nostalgia on the same level as helping to save lives. And the story is a tense study in what it means to strive for the stars, to go into space. The action takes place entirely on Earth, in a training pool, and yet the stakes are life and death. The piece explores the ways that people feel pressure to add more and more to their plate, and how dire an impact that can have.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Space, Astronauts, Dancing, Injury, Priorities</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> Given the times we live in this is a rather audacious story, actually. Because what’s it’s looking at is the way that people overclock themselves. It’s a tactic that has become increasingly necessary amidst the late capitalism corruption that has seen wealth migrate to a criminal few pushed forward effort (always more and more) as the only way to “earn” safety and security. That’s not exactly what the story is about, but at the same time I do see the piece looking at the practice of trying to do too much and beginning to push back against that. Where a more familiar trope would find Ruby finding ways that her dancing hobby would allow her to do something she might not have been able to do otherwise, here we see the other side of the coin, where dance practice has put Ruby in a position where she risks both herself and people trapped in space counting on her to help them survive. Now, I don’t think the piece is really saying that people have to devote themselves entirely to one thing. But I do think the story is pushing Ruby to confront why she’s still dancing and what she wants out of life. If she’s doing it because she can’t inhabit being an astronaut all the time and living in the world After the Meteor, then I do think it’s really questioning if she should be an astronaut. Because her actions there aren’t the same as some desk job where a mistake might mean some extra headaches for a few people. What she does is life and death, and more than that it’s what she wants to do. More than being a dancer, which she can still do casually. It might mean giving up competitive dance, but that loss pales a bit when compared to a human being. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Song” by <b>Erinn L. Kemper</b> (7013 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Dan is an underwater welder working in a place that specializes in rendering whale meat for consumption. It’s a job that has a lot of dangers and drawbacks—the long relentless hours, the gory nature of the job, the isolation, the violence that eco-activists might visit, and the nature of the whales themselves, their feelings and their song. For Dan, who has lost his wife and has little but the job to keep him going, and for Suzanne, a scientist studying whale song and behavior, they both are touched by a song many different whales have taken to repeating. It’s a strange read, dreamlike at times and haunted, about the horrors of consumerism and consumption and the grinding despair that exploitation, the cornerstone of our society, can bring.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Whales, Butchering, Oceans, Songs, CW- Suicide</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This is not an easy story to read. It’s heavy in many ways, including multiple depictions and mentions of suicide, so definitely know that going in. But I do love the statement it makes about consumption and about sentience and about the way that being ground up constantly is soul crushing. Annihilating. And that it cuts both ways. The workers who do the butchering are doing it knowing the intelligence of the whales, knowing the song. And so both livestock and butchers here are suffering to further this work that ends up destroying them both. That robs them of everything but this death, this bloody tragedy, and I like how the story renders that down, carves out the heart of the ways that people lose hope. For me, at least, it’s a statement not just on whales and raising them for food but rather dealing with the knowledge that you are locked in a system that is concerned only with your transformation into a product. Into money and profit. For the whales, this knowledge carries with it a kind of song, one that they all begin to echo. Because they can all mourn the lives they won’t be able to live. Because they are alive only at the whims of the company wanting to sell their lives and bodies. Because they don’t have much left. And it touches Dan and Suzanne because thye can’t avoid it either, can’t help but see that their fate is linked to the whales, that if one sentient species is on the menu then we all are, and that’s a truly crushing through. It’s certainly not a happy piece, but then I feel that it’s something very much worth facing, and that the story frames viscerally well. A haunting read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Old Media” by <b>Annalee Newitz</b> (5380 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> John is a former slave, not enfranchised and living with the bot who saved him when his last owner fled to avoid being caught by some unsavory characters. The world he inhabits now is almost...normal, but always defined in the context of what it allows to those who are enfranchised. For John, it’s a past that he mostly wants to forget, though it’s also something he doesn’t want to erase. It’s complicated, which is how it goes for the story as well, which mixes a sort of slice-of-life feel with a strong focus on his relationship with the bot, Med. The two of them share something deep and nuanced, and the story does an amazing job exploring it and revealing its beauty. It’s a story about intimacy and trust, safety and art and recycling, and it’s utterly heartwarming.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Media, CW- Slavery, Sex, Love, Libraries</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love the way this story explore relationships. Not just the stunning example of John and Med, former-slave and bot, the two dealing with the ways that they are seen by society, fearing and hoping what they see in each other. Not just that, though it really is a joy to behold, and I love John and his energy, his peppiness despite or perhaps because of the incredible difficulties he’s faced. That they are finally able to have something that seems at least safe and secure, that is theirs, is just really beautiful and fills me with warm fuzzies. Still, though, I feel like there is an underlying tension in the story for me. A sort of tightness that comes not from what they have managed to do but from the fragility of it. The fragility that they can mostly avoid or ignore, because what they have is so freeing, but for me at the distance I have to them there is this weight in my chest about them, a worry because the world is Not Okay and there are so many ways that what they have can be threatened. Can be destroyed. And I think that’s what gets me most about this story, that this beauty is blooming amid a world that is pretty fucking dystopian, where slavery is widespread and people are really only people to the extent that they can own themselves. It’s frightening and though John and Med can have this moment when they completely trust each other and can believe in the safety of their apartment, there’s a part of me that fears them learning that the safety they feel is illusory. Is good only until someone with more power wants something. And then...well...fuck. And I love that, love the complexity it requires and the care it shows for the characters while also reminding the reader of the dangers here, the warning signs that all is not well, even if we all root like hell that John and Med are just going to get to be Okay. So yeah, go read this one. It’s AMAZING!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-10100205539184702222019-03-04T04:00:00.001-08:002019-03-06T04:42:17.444-08:00Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #272<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s1600/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="1000" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s400/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Art by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flaviobolla.com/">Flavio Bolla</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><i>The two stories in the latest issue of <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-272/">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a> are linked by water, by characters who find being submerged to be more natural than being on land. Who are not afraid of the dark and deep. But who are also not free. Who have to live on the demands of others, bound to service that they don’t exactly understand. And they both want freedom, though of different sorts. And when the time comes where it’s within their grasps, they have to make the decision of if they will reach for it, and how. The pieces are very different in tone and style, but both are intense and satisfying reads and I’ll get right to the reviews!</i><br /><div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“When Sirens Sing of Roses and of Delegated Power” by <b>Nin Harris</b> (5195 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Velia is one of three siren-sisters who work for the Queen Mother, a powerful and increasingly eccentric presence in the royal court of a vast underwater domain. She and her sisters are tasked with retrieving a serving-dish from the parlor of the court’s Arch Mage, Rasheel. What might have been a simple enough theft, however, becomes something very complex, a a little bit steamy, as Velia and Rasheel meet and navigate each other. The piece is told with a refreshing and earnest voice and a fantasy that mixes styles, times periods, and magic to great effect. It has romance, skulduggery, a smattering of courtly intrigue, and heaping helping of magic, and it’s a lot of fun.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Songs, Waters, Sirens, Mer-people, Theft, Love</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love the voice of this story, the way Velia comes across as open and earnest, her descriptions and observations full of quiet beauty and her dialogue nearly blunt in comparison, revealing a siren who doesn’t have time for the superfluous or loaded. Oh, she can flirt, and does to charming effect within the story, but there’s a line between that and the kind of intrigue that might be expected of a thief. Not that she’s really a thief at heart. Instead, she says things plainly and directly, something that seems to immediately break through the defenses of Rasheel, the Arch Mage who seems to carry the weight of the kingdom on his back and desires only a release from his burdens. And I like that he seems to recognize in Velia immediately something that he’s been missing, just as she sees something in him that seems to solidify all her dissatisfaction with her current employ and employer. She’s a subordinate, and for all her claims that she’s independent, she’s stuck in her current place as errand-runner. She sees in Rasheel a way out of that, something that will involve her being able to be an equal. For Rasheel I think it’s more complicated. He wants someone to take away his burden because he feels it’s too much, and he’s tired all the time. He wants to quit, even though he does good work, because he doesn’t feel like it’s worth it. And I just like that the solution for this is something quick and decisive and that...works. Where he doesn’t have to quit, where what he needs to do is give up some of his power and share some of his responsibility. It’s not the solution he asked for, but I do like that’s what he gets, and that he recognizes that it’s the right call, even if it’s not really what he wanted. It’s a fun romp of a story, romantic and magical and featuring a quick but vibrant world building, and it’s very much worth checking out! A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Boy Who Loved Drowning” by <b>R.K. Duncan</b> (4230 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Bit is bought by a master diviner, Kal, who is the best at what she does, which is drowning. For the truth swims in the deep waters, in the black still places, and she sees in Bit potential, because he is not afraid of the water. In fact, he comes to crave it, the place where he can play, where he can imagine, where the friendly weeds can make games with him. Where he can find answers that he should not be able to find. The piece is mysterious and gorgeous, lonely and deliciously dark. Bit is a character it’s easy for me to root for, and the story takes him and the reader on a journey as sweet as drowning, as bitter as truth.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Water, Drowning, Divination, Apprentices, Truth</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love what this story does with the cold dark waters where Bit finds a connection. Because despite the fantasy trappings here, despite the fact that Bit is treated fairly well by his master, it’s always the case that Bit is bought and paid for, taken away from all other children company and given only the lake as a playground. Where he is told that he will make mistakes and yet never does. All he ever finds is the truth, because the lake, because the drowning itself, wants him to. Because the drowning seems just as lonely as Bit, just as but off from everyone else. Some plunge its depths to find the truth, but they do so for themselves, thinking of the waters as an obstacle to the truth rather than the home of the truth. Except for Bit, who does see the waters as his home, who plays with the weeds and the water rather than seeking to overcome them. His relationship evolves in ways that seem good at first, that seem beautiful and fragile, but that grow darker the more and more he finds there at the bottom of the lake. And it is easy to frame this darkness as hungry, as wanting something dangerous from Bit. Certainly that’s what Kal senses, and her actions are in line with a person concerned for her ward. Except that the drowning never lies. And it’s possible as well that Kal really is distrustful not out of concern for Bit, but because she doesn’t understand what he has and is afraid of it. And in some ways it’s easy to paint the drowning as a monster, because it’s unfathomable and just as desperate for Bit as he is for it. But with that logic Kal is no less dangerous, no more trustworthy, and when it comes time for Bit to make the choice about what he will do, it’s hard for me to fault him. Because he’s not free. Because there is no indication that the drowning wants to hurt him. Not that it seems safe, but sometimes there are no safe options, and for a young boy without freedom, that’s certainly the case here. And it’s a lovely and wrenching story, dark and sweet and excellent!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-34917179063627140022019-03-01T04:52:00.000-08:002019-03-01T04:52:34.958-08:00Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #64<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9EAEly3ymQk/XHkqgUhPGoI/AAAAAAAAE-Q/SRBMBw7w_q8uIKYiZNerL0qxtLdMX5bSQCLcBGAs/s1600/cover-image_11cd0386-d9fa-4158-87b1-7516c5ed8e29_470x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="470" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9EAEly3ymQk/XHkqgUhPGoI/AAAAAAAAE-Q/SRBMBw7w_q8uIKYiZNerL0qxtLdMX5bSQCLcBGAs/s320/cover-image_11cd0386-d9fa-4158-87b1-7516c5ed8e29_470x.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Art by <a href="https://ashantifortson.com/">Ashanti Fortson</a></td></tr></tbody></table><i>Four stories and a poem make February a rather full month for <a href="https://firesidefiction.com/">Fireside Magazine</a>. Though most of the fiction is fairly short, the pieces end up packing a rather palpable emotional punch, from a story about sentient spaceships to a piece about gods and grandmothers to a guide to surviving on Mars. The longest piece, too, is a great exploration of the magical girl idea through a very new lens and split between different perspectives that have some disagreements on What Actually Happened. Throw in a poem full of history and hurt and hope and the issue is a strong one that shows just what makes short SFF so wonderful. To the reviews!</i><br /><div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Symphony for the Space Between the Stars” by <b>Jenn Reese</b> (802 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> <i>Aurora</i>&nbsp;is a ship flying through the void, heading for Earth. Her mission is set out by the protocols that she follows, the routine that is dictated by her captain and crew. Not that she doesn’t bend the rules a little bit, trying to bring a bit of music into a situation that her captain doesn’t appreciate. But for the most part her life is this rigid set of guidelines that she doesn’t deviate from. And the truth about that comes more and more clear as the story progresses, and what has happened with \<i>Aurora</i>, and more importantly her crew, is revealed. It’s a quiet piece for all that it is full of music, or perhaps I should say it’s a piece defined by restraint. By distance. By rules and by loss. But one that finds a bit of freedom, and takes a chance on life and noise and rebellion.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Music, Spaceships, AI, Protocols, Loss</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is such a sweet story, though one that grows out of something of a horrifying situation, where <i>Aurora</i>&nbsp;is going about her business every day as if her crew is still alive. And, well...yeah. But because she wasn’t released from her mission, because her captain bound her by the orders to return to Earth and essentially pretend that everything was still the same...well, it’s not a great situation for her. She’s stuck trying to keep herself fulfilled in the small ways she can deviate from the script. In doing the things that didn’t have protocols, so she can fudge a little. But only a little. Until another ship comes along. And I like that it’s this moment of finding another person, of breaking through the isolation that had settled around her, that allows her to see that she doesn’t have to follow orders. That there might be something more than just following orders. Not that she didn’t want to do other things before, but that she didn’t exactly have the means, and she might still have been a bit directionless after losing her crew. Her mission. And I just love the way the story brings her back around, to act on her own initiative, as she had been experimenting with. To make noise into music, and her own inclinations into a mission to live and explore. It’s short but packs quite the punch all the same, and it’s a wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Autumn of June” by<b> Stu West </b>(910 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> This piece finds a young person staying or living with their grandparents and having mostly a normal childhood. Except that their grandmother is friends with a lot of gods who like to stop by and hang out and tell stories and store their magical weapons around. The piece follows this, capturing a slice of life that is rather nostalgic in its look, showing a moment when the narrator learns something about their grandmother. How she goes beyond their memory of her, their picture of her just in the kitchen, being old. And in some ways it’s about them finding out that their grandmother is a lot more adventurous and sought after than they might have wanted to know, too.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Gods, Grandparents, Legends, Monsters</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I really like the way the story takes this idea and builds it, that this little old lady who the narrator sees very much as a little old lady has all of this hidden depth to her. Not just a slew of stories, which are easy for a child to dismiss as just stories of the Forever Ago that might as well be made up. But rather that they have to sort of put their grandmother in this new context because she’s kickass, because she’s friends with gods for a reason, and it’s something that maybe never really occurred to the narrator before. To them, the grandmother’s friendship with the gods is just part of her charm. But they, too, are rather mundane in all of this. it’s not until they get to see her in action, staring down an enormous demon, that they really start to see that their grandmother is much more than they thought. That the reason she’s so impressive is because she acts, and acts righteously, and gives strength of conviction even to the gods. Where they might have hesitated, when she shows her own bravery, she inspires it in them, so that they don’t let wrongs go by unfought. And it’s really a charming little story, balanced with the narrator’s boredom at there not being anything on the television while a real-life hero is a room away with some real-life gods. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Due By the End of the Week” by <b>Brandon O’Brien</b> (3910 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Derek is the resident high school brain, and he opens the story lamenting that he’s been given a group presentation with one of the more popular, athletic girls in the school, Kelly Francis. Told between the two in alternating perspectives that cover the same periods of time, the story explores how they both experience the world very, very differently. And While Derek is certain that Kelly just isn’t trying hard enough and is spending all her time partying, the truth of the matter is a much different story, and involves a talking cat, some magic accessories, and a bunch of really gross aliens in need of some discipline. It’s a fun story, full of energy and innovative in the way it overlaps the narratives, revealing how differently the same events sound depending on who the narrator is.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Transformations, High School, Aliens, Homework, Magic, Cats</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I love the way this story uses perspective to sort of twist expectations and show how this is a much different thing for these two different people. How, for Derek, this is a story all about his problem, about this group project that he doesn’t want, and his selfishness in trying to get ahead. Which in itself might not be the worst thing. I mean, he works hard and tries to excel at what he does so that he can maybe get a piece of the pie that Kelly’s mom wants for her, too. He applies himself, but at the same time he’s a bit of an asshole, and completely turned inward. He’s resentful of Kelly for her seeming popularity and wants nothing to do with working with her so that they can both get a good grade. And Kelly, who he sees as selfish and absorbed in only her preppy problems, is actually working herself ragged trying to help and save everyone, even Derek, both in the realms of her magical battle against the aliens trying to eat the students of her school and against the dangers of failing. She wants to work with Derek on the project but is rebuffed and insulted and still manages to make sure he doesn’t end up partly digested by an alien eye monster. It’s just great because it goes over the same events and the reader gets to see how Derek changes things to make himself seem more of the good guy, more of the victim, when it becomes obvious that he’s not narrating in good faith. That he’s dedicated to the idea that he’s good rather than to the practices of being good. And it’s fun and a wonderful twist of the magical girl tropes and I just really like it. It’s sweet, full of weird action and distinctly hilarious characters, and very much worth checking out. Go read it!</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Martian Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Gravity Chamber” by <b>Jennifer Stephan Kapral</b> ( words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Presented as a list of part advice, part personal narrative of the process of reproducing on Mars, the piece follows a woman taking part in the process, and what she feels and thinks as it progresses. The piece lingers on the ways that Mars is different from Earth, the different requirements and the overall more precarious feeling of the situation there. It looks at survival, and what that means, and reproduction, and what that means, all in a way that reveals a deep kind of hurt, and a need for such a guide as the title implies. It’s a piece that mixes some lighter elements with what is at its core a heavy message and experience, which is perhaps incredibly appropriate given that the piece unfolds in a gravity chamber.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Mars, Survival, Family Leave, Gravity, CW- Pregnancy/Reproduction</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> Adaptation. In many ways it’s something that humans excel at, because we can reason through it, alter ourselves to fit into hostile environments. And there aren’t many so hostile as Mars, a planet that humans have not evolved to live. And so a lot of things there depend on adaptation in an artificial sense. The designing of crops, the designing of chambers that will mimic enough Earth-like conditions that people can produce viable reproductive material. And here I feel the story touches on how that ability to adapt isn’t necessarily a good thing. Because it means that humans will often let things go past the point when they should act. Because Earth in this case seems like it has been largely wrecked, and humans on Mars are surviving, but that’s not really the brightest of futures. Just getting by, just holding on. That’s not really what we should be aspiring to. And I think the story might go a little further than that and imply that we lose something whatever the reason of adaptation, and that humanity changing how they have children specifically might be wrong, which I don’t necessarily warm to as much, but that could be my bias sneaking into my reading. Basically, I want the message to be that the reason for adaptation matters. That if it’s entered into consensually and cooperatively, then I don’t think changing traditional means of reproduction is Wrong. But I do think that with the mentions of what happened on Earth, what the story is doing instead is saying that because people didn’t really choose this, because this is just how people are surviving, it does represent a loss and a sort of tragedy. Which does speak to me. But yeah, it’s a quick and fine read that people should definitely check out!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poem</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Roots to Touch Sky” by <b>Sheree Renée Thomas</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of growth and time, expression and yearning. It revolves around imagery that evokes trees, with roots that dig deep when they aren’t necessarily given access to light and a environment that promotes growth. It is tinged with a recognition that for some it’s the roots that give rise to thriving, to success in a botanical and perhaps personal sense. That when the canopy is crowded so as not to encourage competition or growth from below, there are ways around and through that roadblock. And the piece is organized into four parts that seem to reach forward and upward. That see the cost of growth, the history of it trapped in the fossil record, and uses that history as a sort of fuel for change. As a way to resist the dominant narrative and, more than that, the dominant desires. Because where many might see the goal of trees growing is to eventually rot and decay, here there seems to me to be a different call. A different aim. That the more audacious action, the more profound statement, is to resist bending to that narrative and instead to insist that the world, that time, that history, is the one to bend. And ultimately I see in the poem a sense of subversion and rebellion, to change everything instead of just trying to improve things enough to catch a glimpse of sunlight filtered through the canopy above. That the game here should not be to adapt to dark but instead to adapt around it, through it, toward a place of belonging and plenty that is not monitored or filtered. To actively become something else, made of air and light instead of branch and bough. To evade the system of rules that always benefit those at the top, and instead build something else, vibrant and alive, where people can truly live their best lives. It’s a great read!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-69647379237840747282019-02-28T03:45:00.001-08:002019-02-28T03:45:27.705-08:00Quick Sips - Serial Box: The Vela [episodes 1-2]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NRjA5o0G4QM/XHfJYrR5vuI/AAAAAAAAE-E/T6Zp98bDT2c7UU_opDmWiYea0ramVqWiACLcBGAs/s1600/cover_tall-2fdf9e3b-2672-4711-aa38-7e4b594fcec3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1235" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NRjA5o0G4QM/XHfJYrR5vuI/AAAAAAAAE-E/T6Zp98bDT2c7UU_opDmWiYea0ramVqWiACLcBGAs/s320/cover_tall-2fdf9e3b-2672-4711-aa38-7e4b594fcec3.jpg" width="246" /></a></div><div><i><br /></i></div><i>So do nothing halfway, I guess. In December I started reviewing Ninth Step Station&nbsp;from Serial Box, and this month I’m adding another of their projects, <a href="https://www.serialbox.com/serials/the-vela">The Vela, which is almost out and is available for pre-order now</a> (and you should really get on that, because wow). The project drops on March 6th, but I want to get out ahead of it and say loudly "It Is GOOD" so you all have time to clear your schedules. From near future to far future (or maybe even “second world science fiction”), this one looks at a solar system facing a decline, a destruction. Because while there was prosperity for a time, a general lack of water has led to over-harvesting of hydrogen from the sun, which in turn has led to cooling, which has made the outer planets uninhabitable. Refugees fleeing these dying worlds are finding most havens closed to them, even as they cannot stay where they are. The humanitarian crisis has produced many who have lost their world and their family, and in response one world has opened its arm to a large ship of refugees. A ship that has gone missing. So yeah, it’s a rather stunning premise, and a project I’m super excited about. Again, I’ll probably look at two episodes or so a month. To the reviews!&nbsp;</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Leisurely Extinction” by<b> SL Huang</b> (serial episode 1)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Asala Sikou is something more than a mercenary, something less than a government agent. In practice, she’s a veteran and a former refugee from a dying world and, above all, a woman who gets things done. When she assigned to protect the life of a visiting head of state, it should be a fairly simple job. Except that the head of state is a dictator whose prejudice and hate are part of the reason that Asala doesn’t have a family any longer. Because in this solar system, hydrogen siphoning from the sun to create water on largely arid planets has led to the sun shrinking, turning the outer planets increasingly uninhabitable. Throw in Niko, a child of the president of one of the more liberal inner planets with some aspirations of hacking and activism, and the story hits the ground running with a lot of energy but still enough emotional moments to keep things complex and rewarding. It’s an episode that does a terrific job of introducing the characters and bringing them to life, and making sure the web of intrigue is so think there’s no hope of moving forward without either getting caught, or unraveling everything.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>AI, Assassination, Trade, Refugees, Non-binary MC</div><div><b><i>Reviews:</i></b> Okay so this story does a lot of things all at once and is a brilliant hook for what promises to be a fantastic series. Because I’m already in love with the two main characters. Asala is professional and talented, a one-woman wrecking crew who has survived so much and seems to succeed in large part because she has little regard for her own safety. She’s messy and reckless, punishing herself for things that were outside her control but that she can’t help feeling guilty about. Responsible for. She’s a former refugee who has carved out something of a home for herself, even if it doesn’t really feel right. And Niko. Niko, my new favorite cinnamon roll, is delightful, a non-binary young person with a lot of thoughts on social justice and the state of the solar system. And really it’s Niko who I feel moves things forward a bit more, because with them there is this feeling that there is a future. A future that they want to move toward by pushing back against the system as is. But they’ve not come up against the same realities that have made Asala rather bitter and jaded. It means they’re rather naive, rather privileged in how wealthy they are and how they’ve been treated. But their idealism is infectious and also delightful. I love the chemistry between Asala and Niko, and the placement where Niko’s obviously going to have some very difficult choices to make.</div><div><br /></div><div>And really the whole situation is compelling. The solar system is on the verge of death because people won’t move to fix the system. It would be too hard, too expensive, and so nothing is done. Sound familiar? the idea of climate refugees and disasters is topical and yet taken far away from any mention of Earth. Instead, the setting is fresh and layered in wounds and corruptions. Even the world the story opens on, which is supposed to be liberal and understanding, is in talks with a dictator and there’s the strong implication that things are more rotten still. The prose is beautiful, the world building intricate and deep, and the action visceral. It’s one hell of an opening salvo and a wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Third Passenger” by <b>Becky Chambers</b> (serial episode 2)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> After the assassination attempts last episode, this one picks up with Asala and Niko headed for Asala’s planet of origin, Hypatia, aboard a private ship. Except that it turns out that they have a special guest for part of the journey—the dictator from the previous episode. Which does not sit well with Niko, who didn’t know ahead of time. And what follows is a rather interesting comedy of errors as the three unlikely companions have to spend time around each other and a malfunctioning ship. The sections still break between Niko and Asala, with a bit more focus on Niko this time through, but also featuring sections looking at the missing <i>Vela</i>&nbsp;and the people on board. It’s a tense read, full of heavy moments where especially Niko begins to learn about the people around them, and step outside the carefully curated nature of their life so far.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Hacking, Non-binary MC, Trans MC, Travel, Diplomacy, Space</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This serial differs from the other that I’m covering (<i>Ninth Step Station</i>) in that it’s not really an episodic narrative. Or...well, it fits neatly into the episodes, but they each push the overall story forward without starting with a new subplot. With this chapter, the main distinction is setting. The main cast (plus their unwanted ship guest) are off planet and cradled in the inky dark. It means they’re isolated together, forced to deal with all the ways they don’t get along. But at the same time, the episode seems to me to be all about empathy and understanding. About the different ways that people face the idea of the end, and how people practice compassion. I love how it layers the voices of the refugees on <i>Vela</i>&nbsp;with the voices of the characters. How it contrasts Asala and Cynwrig, and how it shows the ways that Niko has been insulated from pain and death. How they find it so easy to condemn when they haven’t been tested. Which in some ways is unfair, because Cynwrig assumes that everyone would do what she has done. That everyone would be conservative in the face of her struggles. Which is bullshit. But certainly it does give a fresh perspective on the kind of savior complex that Niko seems to have. The conversations between the characters are amazing, and I love the deep dive the piece takes into the world building and lives of the refugees fleeing their freezing planet. Also Cynwrig giving a lecture on self care is just so fucking messed up it’s amazing.</div><div><br /></div><div>The episode also pushes forward some of the larger story, too, though mostly it feels like a bridge to get more information about the setting and a better feel of the characters. It does, though, complicate the idea that Niko is super naive. Because in this chapter they are playing things on multiple levels, obfuscating things and making a very good show of being the spy that their father wants them to be. And the mystery of what their true purpose is, and what their father’s secrets are, is still very much at the top of my list of things I want to figure out. It’s a compelling way of building up the narrative, and while it skirts a little close to playing on the duplicitous non-binary cliché, I have faith that Niko is still mostly earnest. At least, I’m not willing to believe because of what has happened that Niko is a villain here, though I love how the episode plays with that idea, because it shows me how much I’m already protective of the character, invested in them and their arc. I <i>want</i>&nbsp;there to be a good reason for this, which means I’m very much looking forward to what happens next. It’s a mostly quite episode, a breather after the frenetic pace of the first one, but there’s still a solid pacing and enough tension to keep everything moving forward. It’s a fantastic episode, and shaping up to be an incredible series.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-67082416003297385092019-02-27T03:54:00.003-08:002019-02-27T04:41:51.290-08:00Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 02/18/2019 & 02/25/2019<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-au-tfNP-_3g/XHZ6aDfiKUI/AAAAAAAAE94/elobFa999Ak_QxvWbdoaOUbHn0jicgUqgCLcBGAs/s1600/dem_bones-600px-333x500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-au-tfNP-_3g/XHZ6aDfiKUI/AAAAAAAAE94/elobFa999Ak_QxvWbdoaOUbHn0jicgUqgCLcBGAs/s320/dem_bones-600px-333x500.png" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="https://www.gracepfong.com/">Grace Fong</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Well, say what you will about the fact that <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/18-february-2019/">Strange</a> <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/25-february-2019/">Horizons</a> publishes all varieties of SFF, because what it always delivers on is right in its name…a h*ckin’ strange experience. A prime example is the short story from the second half of February, which combines an almost dreamlike, nightmarelike feel with a quest for apples in a ruined landscape prowled by twisted doctors. It’s as creepy as the poetry here is at turns fun and devastating. The pieces here show that SFF isn’t just one thing, isn’t defined by plot or world-building elements, but can shine by the strength of their weirdness. Their lovely strange horizons. So let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Story</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Dem Bones” by <b>Lavie Tidhar</b> (2216 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Ezra is a former...inmate(?) of a strange group knows as doctors who roam the world demanding apples from people, taking those who can’t produce. Exra spent five years inside, and now that he’s out he’s got a line on an apple tree that might set him up good and proper. Only getting to it might be something of a problem, so he’s recruited some help. The piece is deeply strange and haunting, the world damaged and perhaps filtered through a man who isn’t really experiencing it the way that it is. If he is, it’s a world where everyone is afraid of doctors, who might as well have stepped out of a nightmare for how they move and act. But their power is unquestionable, and Ezra is determined to try for the garden he’s seen growing in an abandoned factory, even if it does seem too good to be true.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Apples, Doctors, Traps, Theft, Death</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> There’s a part of me that just doesn’t know what exactly to think of this story, with its bizarre and haunting imagery and the feeling that all isn’t quite what it seems. If these doctors require apples, then why aren’t there more apple trees? Why is everything so burnt out, so strained and frayed. The city seems to be greatly reduced, and the people greatly disheartened. What remains is violence and death and loss and incarceration. And yet I’m not quick to dismiss the literal reality of the story as merely some extended metaphor. Yes, it’s possible that it’s making a statement on healthcare, on doctors and their requirement that people hold up standards in order not to have their autonomy and freedom taken away. That Ezra might be someone with some severe cognitive and perception issues and he’s seeing a world twisted by paranoia and delusions. There’s something compelling to the world, though, that I don’t want to be metaphoric. Some statement instead that in a world where apples, a presumably renewable resource, are the most important currency, people are still just scraping by. Because of how everything is loaded against them. Because everything is trapped for the hell of it, and sometimes the best you can do is get a taste of something crisp and bright and wonderful. It’s a difficult and odd piece, but definitely one that’s worth spending some time with. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poetry</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Modern Girl’s Guide to Dating the Paranormal” by <b>Caroline Cantrell</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This is a charming poem about dating and about the paranormal. About advice for girls who are thinking about going out with a person who’s a bit magical. More than that, though, I feel the poem does a wonderful job of capturing some of the ideas behind dating advice, especially for women. Namely, that there’s no real safety here, and no real...”winning” we’ll say. For every option here, there is advice, but all of it is about the ways that these magical beings might be a bit dangerous, a bit cruel, a bit...not perhaps the greatest choice for a significant other. The poem is broken into parts for each potential suitor, and there’s a lot of fun to be had with those, with the varieties of monsters and witches and time travelers on display. I love the way that the stanzas grow and shrink depending on how complex the situation is. But there’s also a darkness to the piece, not just because it’s dealing with the supernatural (not for me, at least) but rather that it’s dealing with dating, which here is essentially getting compared with monster hunting. For me, at least, the implication is that dating is like going out there into a dark world needing to be prepared for everything. Needing to be able to tell vampire from werewolf from ghost, not simply because it’s nice to know but because if things go wrong you need to know how to handle them. To protect yourself. Which is something that never truly leaves the equation, no matter how much a person wants dating to be simple and safe. So yeah, it’s a delightful piece about dating and desire, and it’s funny and cute and you should definitely check it out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“In One Sentence” by<b> Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of loss, and of the reminders of loss. Of home, and the reminders of home, and how in situations of war and strife and destruction, home is a loaded idea. Something that cannot be simply captured. Something that defies some sort of condensation for the sake of ease or brevity. For me, that echoes in the title, which seems to imply that the narrator is seeking to answer a question. On a form, perhaps? In an interview? Something that is requiring them to answer in one sentence something about who they are or where they come from. To describe their home, or why they left it. Something that sounds so simple, that looks so harmless there on a piece of paper with maybe two lines blank for the person to answer. In one sentence. Because these things need to be reduced to that much in order to be processed efficiently. As if that were even the point. As if it weren’t all to erase the harm being done, the complexity of the situation and the reality that this person doesn’t seem to have left their home—their home left them. And now here they are, not really sure of themself, not really sure of much except that they remember a place and a feeling that no longer exists. They’ve been forced away and now have to answer this question in a way that’s not satisfying or meaningful for them, but which might carry the weight of so much. The ability to live in another place. Or to hold a job. Or go to school. To apply for aid, or for asylum. All of these things that should want more than a single sentence, but know that if people actually got into it all they couldn’t then deny it. It makes it so simple, that these things need to be approached like elevator pitches in order to justify a human life and yeah, it’s a very powerful poem that does a lot in a relatively small amount of space. It captures a complexity and conflictedness about the idea of home for the narrator that cannot be reduced easily, that must be allowed space to be explored and mapped. And it’s an excellent read you should definitely check out!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-87520500773953643942019-02-26T03:37:00.002-08:002019-02-26T03:37:56.042-08:00Quick Sips - Terraform February 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Snrd3FB3JY/Vbd4kCWRdOI/AAAAAAAAA20/CJteLCnO5LQgINwgd7d7ghN41SiDiNwkACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/1416114790828141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="1200" height="160" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Snrd3FB3JY/Vbd4kCWRdOI/AAAAAAAAA20/CJteLCnO5LQgINwgd7d7ghN41SiDiNwkACPcBGAYYCw/s400/1416114790828141.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><i><br /></i></div><i>Three original short stories mark another solid month of releases from <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/topic/terraform">Motherboard's Terraform</a> (plus there's a reprint, something more rare for the publication, that's definitely worth checking out but that I am not covering here). The pieces as always look at what the future might hold for humanity, and the visions range from dire to something much more hopeful. And there's a thread that runs through these pieces of connection and isolation. Of relationships and loneliness. And the future seems brightest where people are able to make genuine connects and live freely. And looks bleakest where people are stifled and pushed to their breaking points. So yeah, let's get to the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div>“A Crisis” by <b>Aigner Loren Wilson</b> (1165 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Told in the first person, the main character is a soldier helping to oversee the executions of bots who refuse to follow orders. The punishment is swift and is severe, and these soldiers take the part of spectators and guards, though the condemned don’t seem to fight back or attempt to escape. The piece is haunting, quiet, and full of hurt, compounded by a personal situation that the narrator finds herself in, drawn to another woman in such a way that doesn’t feel safe in this time, place, and environment. It’s a lovely but dark exploration of death, destruction, and the spectacle of both.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> CW- Executions, Bots, Soldiers, Relationships, Disobedience, Queer MC</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This is a strange piece, one that unfolds in a future in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where bots are being put to death and yet don’t seem to care that much. The show is mesmerizing, the bots shot through with electricity to erase them, to wipe them clean. Which might not seem like death, because these bots don’t really get shown as being sentient or feeling even. It’s possible that they are being executed for just having a malfunction, which is interpreted as insubordination. The result, though, is that for the soldiers there is the lesson that stepping out of line is punished with death. That to fail to follow orders will not be allowed. And for the narrator, who I’m guessing is a woman mostly because of how the men around her treat her and because of the first line of the story, which I assume is also from her perspective, is forced to hide the way she feels about another woman because of the dangers involved. Because it goes against orders, against the “way things are.” And it’s just this piece that for me carries with it this weight, this oppressive environment tha the soldiers and especially the narrator are supposed to accept without question and yet they cannot. Like the bots, it’s possible that through no fault of their own they might be found guilty of disobeying orders. Of failing to comply. And the threat of that is something that wears on them, that eats at them, and it’s a subtle but sharp piece about that kind of a life, that kind of a situation. A lovely read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Early Adopter” by <b>Kevin Bankston </b>(3937 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>You monster. *sniff* No, I’m totally fine. Just...just fine. Okay, deep breaths now. Ahem. This story follows a couple brought together at the dawn of what could be considered the real “computer age.” At least, they were able to connect because of Craigslist, and maintained their often tempestuous relationship through the various social medias and technological advances. The story is in some ways about difference, about the generational shifts that can happen, as one of the people here is Gen X (maybe Gen Y) and the other is a Millennial. And yet through their different approaches to tech, they still manage to get stuck in each other’s orbits, the story weaving a deeply moving, slightly tragic, always messy story about love in the age of digital media. And it’s bittersweet and heartbreaking even as it’s hopeful, about the promise of technology and not just the fear of it.</div><div><b><i>Keywords: </i></b>Marriage, Technology, Social Media, Uploaded Consciousness, Divorce</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a beautiful story about love and the way that technology can often complicate things. The way that age and familiarity with technology can often complicate things. Because really it follows a couple who are great together, except that they have some different ways of approaching tech. Where the man here (there’s a man and a woman in the core relationship) is older and a bit less enthusiastic about changing technology, the woman is all about getting the latest thing, taking each new “improvement” because she genuinely thinks they are improvements. And even when they’re not, even when they’re kind of flops, it’s the attitude towards tech that’s the most important thing. Because he’s never really able to shed his prejudice against it, against the artificiality of tech, that it’s not “real” in the same way that talking to another person is, even if it’s doing basically that exact thing, only with more possibilities, more range, more features. He’s something of a purist, wanting to experience something that he completely understands and therefore trusts. For her, though, there’s not the distrust. She does trust tech, and the experiences it offers, and isn’t bothered by any real “fake-ness”. Instead, she embraces the ways she can feel and live, questioning the use and value of barriers between “real” and “fake” that blur through the application of technology. What does it matter if something is “fake” if there’s no difference, if it’s also “real,” and if that realness allows a person to do things they dreamed of, then what exactly is the harm? It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing just how messy their relationship is, too, breaking up and getting back together multiple times and still through it all in love, pointed forward, even when what that means always changes. And it’s just a fantastic story that you should definitely make time for! Go read it!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>“Shutdown” by <b>Jessica Maison </b>(1547 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>In an America of perpetual government shutdowns that have gutted the social safety net, Jolene is a woman who works for a national park kept barely open because of tourists. Jolene, though, like the country, isn’t really doing well with the cutbacks and the demands that she work ever harder for less rewards. Essentially homeless though crashing on a friend’s couch, she tries to hold on in the hope that maybe something will happen to end the difficulties. The piece explores a certain kind of helplessness that feels all too real, that’s rooted in corruption and the imbalance of power that means those without money can do nothing but be ground into fertilizer for the wealth of the rich. Unless, it seems, they can manage to become a seed instead, growing not up amid the toxicity of that environment but rather down, away from the whole affair, and for something that has to be better.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Shutdowns, Austerity, National Parks, Poppies, Seeds, Transformations</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>This story has such a real feel to it. That sense of struggling and struggling and still not being able to avoid sinking. That feeling that even when you think you’re making the responsible, good decision, you can’t stop a plunge when there’s no safety net. When you can’t stop the descent. And how the country is moving more and more in that direction. Where there’s no relief, no coming back from even one very bad thing. And here Jolene is desperately trying to do what’s right and at every turn being punished for it. Not that she’s have any better luck doing wrong, here. It’s just that there is no good choice. No winning when the game is so very loaded. It’s rendered in this gutting way, underscoring the spiral of loss that she just can’t stop or slow, chronicling how she’s like the country on the whole, everything spiraling down once people give up on the promise of what the country should be. Once it all becomes protecting businesses at the expense of people, it’s all shot to hell. There’s no coming back when people have made sure the road back is burned to cinder, when those with the most power are still invested in making sure things don’t improve, because they feel if the world is going to end, they want it to end on their terms, in the way that leaves them the best off. And it’s a gutting, fragile read that ends on a moment of change and sublimation. Where Jolene can’t take it anymore and just...goes. Which is beautiful and heartbreaking but quite, quite good. Definitely a story to spend some time with!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-40402782558951839172019-02-25T03:41:00.002-08:002019-02-25T03:44:16.717-08:00LIVER BEWARE! You're in for a Drunk Review of Goosebumps #16: ONE DAY AT HORRORLAND<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L7wL3oJTLq0/XHPUAOcX98I/AAAAAAAAE9c/pi4nPd1DplIvNc65ZiI5mctD4cosJRFSwCLcBGAs/s1600/16_OneDayatHorrorland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="874" data-original-width="620" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L7wL3oJTLq0/XHPUAOcX98I/AAAAAAAAE9c/pi4nPd1DplIvNc65ZiI5mctD4cosJRFSwCLcBGAs/s640/16_OneDayatHorrorland.jpg" width="454" /></a></div><div>Readers, can I share something with you? When I was a wee lad, I was very afraid of Ernest Scared Stupid. Like, I would leave the room during the climactic scene where...I think a troll is turning people into little statues and needs to be destroyed with...milk? Am I remembering this correctly? Anyway, a few years ago I went back and watched that movie again (there might have been drinking involved, yes) and...well, let’s just say that it didn’t exactly live up to my memories. Not that it wasn’t...interesting...in its own way. But that let’s be real it’s not what anyone should consider good. But why share this charming anecdote? Because ONE DAY AT HORRORLAND was one of my favorite Goosebumps books when I was little. Something about it just...well, I was a fan. But reading it through now is quite a different experience. Not that it’s terrible. It does a few things that aren’t the worst, but it’s a large step down from last month’s awesomeness.</div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSyxWMrvnQ/XHPUZ1Jl8RI/AAAAAAAAE9k/D4vL0AFtt1EcNH8aJTyTdhTJEXO3wJGTACLcBGAs/s1600/9780590477383-355x470.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="355" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSyxWMrvnQ/XHPUZ1Jl8RI/AAAAAAAAE9k/D4vL0AFtt1EcNH8aJTyTdhTJEXO3wJGTACLcBGAs/s400/9780590477383-355x470.jpeg" width="301" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and hey, to be all appropriate about this I’m drinking a Berry Weiss from Leinenkugels, which one of the very first beers I drank (after I turned 21, even, because I was a good kid). Like the rest of today’s adventures, it’s...not very good. But I can drink a lot of it without really feeling it. Forward!!!<br /><br />So the lead in to this book is actually pretty substantial. Lizzy is a young girl out for a day trip to a zoo with her parents, younger brother Luke, and Luke’s friend Clay. By now you know my fan theory that younger sisters just don’t exist in the Goosebumps universe. Best to just accept these things and move on. But anyway, gender roles occur and the family seems to be lost on the way. And like really, really lost, driving through some sort of desert with no knowledge of where they are or how to get to this zoo. And kids are just the worst. Especially Luke, who apparently likes to tickle and pinch people without provocation. Things in the car get tense and the dad seems about ready to drive them all into the desert to die when they stumble along a sign for Horrorland. Thinking that at the least they can get directions, they pull in and get of the car. Readers, the car explodes.</div><div><br /></div><div>In perhaps the most jarring signs of You Shoulder Just Fucking Run, the car explodes and leaves the family stranded at this weird, lightly populated theme park. Where there are no phones. Where the employees are all dressed as monsters. And where Luke reeeeally wants to spend the day. Deciding tha this is as good a place to die as any, the parents agree to look around and maybe find a phone (ah, the days before cell phones made all of this pointless). So the family enters and almost immediately the kids are sent on their way while the parents try to find someone in charge. The kids quickly find that this park is not fucking around. It will bring them to the edge of death and harvest their terrified shrieks for the amusement of others and leave them charred husks to be binned with the sawdust and stale vomit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I do still like the rides aspect of this book. They’re not as cool as I remember (and tbh they’re not as cool as ESCAPE FROM THE CARNIVAL OF HORRORS!, which is pretty similar but does things just a bit better), but they manage a good variety and the creepiness does build and build as the kids make their way through the gauntlet of rides and attractions. Namely, the park begins more and more to play ricks on them, making them feel things that cannot be there, or at least that their eyes tell them couldn’t be there. Spiders crawling on their legs that leave no evidence. Bats that swarm them only to disappear at the faintest light. Something is Going On and Lizzy at least starts to really sense that they should be going. Of course, Luke is a little shit and just keeps egging them all on.</div><div>Which is an area where this book slips a bit back into Goosebumps’ standard misogyny-by-way-of-horror-tropes, having Lizzy’s very reasonable concern get dismissed as being afraid of the faux-scary park. When really, THEIR CAR JUST BLEW UP! Some fear seems like it would be pretty okay to express at a time like this, and while maybe I could see this park as being a bit cathartic, embracing that fear to a ridiculous degree in order to exorcise it, it’s just a bit disappointing that Lizzy gets shoved into the wet blanket role while Luke gets to be the bastard calling everyone else a scaredy cat and pretending to be brave. The book does not really punish him for his arrogance, where it certainly had for girls put into that role in the past. It _does_ allow Lizzy to be “right,” I suppose, which is nice, but she doesn’t really get to gloat about it. Things just keep on escalating and escalating while she frets that things here are not what they seem.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until the other shoe drops. The parents return and say they’ve been assured that the car situation “will be taken care of.” Because yeah, that sounds legit. They go on another ride only to hate it and nope out of it and want to leave. Only...they’re not allowed to. And the park and all its employees seem to turn on them. Only for (dramatic pause because wtf moment incoming) the employees to reveal that the entire adventure at the park has been a hidden camera show for The Monster Channel. The family will get a brand new car out in the parking lot, as long as they can survive being attacked by a horde of monsters. Ready-set-go!!! I do appreciate how quickly things just completely hit the fan in this book. It’s a bit goofy but it’s also very Goosebumps. In fact, if we’re grounding these books by their similarities, this one is very much in the same vein as THE GIRL WHO CRIED MONSTER. Why? Well, because it plays with the same idea that the world has a hidden side to it filled with horrors that most people just don’t see or chose to ignore. Because this hidden camera show does exist, but it exists for monsters, by monsters. The employees of the park are all monsters and the family, by stumbling in, are now not allowed to leave. Welp, time to die, I guess. The horde is coming for them and the family is out of options. Only Lizzy remembers that the park had signs throughout it about no pinching. Which, okay. But as the park turned out to mean everything on its signs literally (the death threats, mostly), she figures that the pinching thing must be important and starts pinching monsters, who...deflate. Let that one sink in for a moment. In this universe where monsters live among us, perhaps the only thing saving humanity from complete annihilation is a completely fucking ridiculous weakness that monsters have to being pinched. A weakness they then put on GIANT SIGNS so that everyone will know NOT TO DO THAT, OKAY?! Sigh...</div><div><br />I do admire that the book commits to something so...weird. Because with this power unlocked, Lizzy and her family are able to make it to the parking lot (no new car, though, boo) and steal a bus and drive straight to a police station. Oh, wait, what? I’m being told that actually, they just drive home because they apparently know where that is and can get there no problem and the giant monster conspiracy that they stumbled across is like...okay now? Maybe even better than okay, because when they do return home, there’s a monster waiting for them to...give them a season pass to next year’s Horrorland attraction. Sweet, a bribe!</div><div><br />So you know what it’s CONSPIRACY TIME!!!</div><div>I’m almost unsure if I can even call this conspiracy time, though, because it’s basically canon now that monsters exist all around us (to the point where they have their own cable television network with millions of global subscribers). As we saw in THE GIRL WHO CRIED MONSTER, they tend to spread out and keep to themselves, blending in and defending their territory with brutal efficiency. So it makes sense I guess that they have something that they can all enjoy as a community that doesn’t require them to be in the same place. It’s a rather nice point, that they’re all bonding over the terror of humans, when really a part of them must be the terrified party, dealing with this weakness that at any moment could leave them a withered sack of skin. In many ways what this book does is give these monsters another reason to feel kinda sorry for them. I mean, their theme park is not popular. They don’t live close enough together to really justify having something like a park for them to play in. It’s just really lost humans that show up. And sure, you can explode their car and torture-scare them, but it’s just not the same. I’m starting to really feel that the true victims in this world are the monsters, who have been defeated by the march of technology and are now just sort of trying to retain their dignity in the face of a truly embarrassing weakness. So sad...</div><div>Anyway, for me the book does a decent job with thinking up some spooky rides (though tbh ESCAPE FROM THE CARNIVAL OF HORRORS! did it better) and further explores the mythos of the monsters as introduced in THE GIRL WHO CRIED MONSTER and was touched lightly in other books. It’s fun, though Luke is super annoying and the book lacks much of the subversive elements that I was hoping would stick around. Seeing as how they were likely unintentional the first time, that makes sense. Still.</div><div>Let’s break it down by the numbers!</div><div>On the “Would I write fanfiction scale of greatness”: 3/5 (It’s not the characters that interest me from this book but rather the expanded setting and the idea of these monsters. I want to write what other kinds of shows they might have, and what they might be like around other monsters. That there is this completely global network of monsters is one of the most creative, imaginative things that Goosebumps has done, imo, and it’s a shame that it’s basically untouched, just mentioned and then ignored after that. I wonder if there is some sort of group that monitors the monsters, or if they’ve largely been able to stay off the radar without human assistance. Just a weird, fascinating idea that I’d love to play with more)</div><div>On the “Is this actually good scale of more trying to be objective”: 3/5 (So this book has its moments. It’s certainly not the worst of reads, and it does build things up for a while. The scares-that-might-kill-you aspect of things is pretty great if underwhelming at times, and I think the book knows when to just go all-out strange. It’s fun, mostly, and it doesn’t do too many things that made me want to throw it at a wall. It’s a very Goosebumps book, with all that means)</div><div>On the “Yeah but this is Goosebumps scale of relative wonderment”: 3/5 (I <i>want</i>&nbsp;to rate this book a bit higher for nostalgia’s sake, but I have to admit that this was a bit of a let down. It could have done something a bit more interesting, and the book could easily have dropped most of the being lost in a car with family parts. Given, that set up the motivation to accept the sketch-as-fuck Horrorland as a viable option, but I don’t really need a reason when it’s a Goosebumps book. As it is, it manages to avoid being terrible and it expands a few things I think deserve to be expanded. I’m excited to see if any future books pick up more of these threads)</div><div><br />And there you have it. Join me next month for another...uh...”scary” installment! Cheers!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-3773846390555433822019-02-22T07:48:00.002-08:002019-02-22T07:48:36.690-08:00Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #48<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3z2BjhkgVpk/XEm3Z4GwDqI/AAAAAAAAE5U/vHk3yQDFX_EtzUSqq1H77Ly4SDTUscCPwCLcBGAs/s1600/diabolical-plots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="370" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3z2BjhkgVpk/XEm3Z4GwDqI/AAAAAAAAE5U/vHk3yQDFX_EtzUSqq1H77Ly4SDTUscCPwCLcBGAs/s320/diabolical-plots.jpg" width="233" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Art by&nbsp;<a href="http://joeysart.wixsite.com/joeyjordan">Joey Jordan</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><i>February brings a pair of stories to <a href="http://www.diabolicalplots.com/category/fiction/">Diabolical Plots</a> that look at aliens and learning. That deal with difference and hope. In very different ways, mind you. And really, the stories are ones that carry with them a note of humor over a well of darkness, that handle some very real and heavy material with care and a slyness that's refreshing and interesting. The stories are fun without being crass, and they feature some great character moments and delightful voices. To the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Local Senior Celebrates Milestone” by <b>Matthew Claxton</b> (2013 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Millie just turned 110. Good genes, right? Well, that might be closer to the truth than it might seem at first glance. Because Millie isn’t like most hum—er, people. Like most people. No, she’s got a secret that she been hiding for a hundred and ten years, through trials and tribulations, through loss and love and life and death. The piece makes great use of casting a little old lady who seems the picture of innocence and revealing her to be something else entirely, a move made even more effective by how you might find yourself rooting for her, even when her mission isn’t exactly benign. It’s a piece that skirts humor with its premise but delivers a rather emotionally powerful impact and a bit of twisted fun.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Aliens, Infiltration, Hybrids, Family, Interviews, Birthdays</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I love the way the story builds its two pictures of Millie, one where she’s a harmless old woman and the other where she’s the agent of a sort of alien invasion, a hybrid brought up to infiltrate humanity to make it ready for the coming of her people. It might seem like a ridiculous or humorous idea, but in practice the story keeps things grounded to the very real life that Millie has lived. The risks she taken, the hopes she had, the balance of trying to pass for human while remaining true to her alien heritage, the parts of herself that she’s never allowed to share with anyone but others like herself. Like with the husband she lost, and the children who are losing interesting in invasion in the face of a long quiet from the homeworld and what is probably a growing investment in Earth. And I connect with that feeling that she has, of nearing exhaustion and despair, of suspecting that maybe all her life has been spent in devotion to a mission that is never going to be realized. And yet she remains looking forward, knowing that life isn’t about winning or losing, but about the journey and the people along the way. Not that a little winning would be a bad thing. Well, unless you’re a human. And it’s a fun and surprisingly moving story about life and age and change, and riding that wave until it reaches the shore or dumps you into the drink. A great read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“How Rigel Gained a Rabbi (Briefly)” by<b> Benjamin Blattberg </b>(3326 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Dov is a Rabbi on his way to teach some children at a distant station when his ship takes him off course to investigate a distress call, something he’s not so keen on but that’s required by law. It brings him into debate time and again, first with the ship’s AI, then with an alien he meets above the planet he arrives at, and finally on the planet itself, with those who but out the call. The piece is fun and funny, with Dov the long-suffering teacher trying to reach his destination and continually blown off course. Meeting those whose situation has mirrored some of the Jewish history of being persecuted for being different. And doing the right thing even when he doesn’t really want to, because it’s unpleasant, but always remaining the teacher, taking whatever chance he can to maybe change a few minds and make the universe a more understanding and safer place for all people.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Jewish MC, Aliens, Teaching, CW- Genocide, Distress</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I love the voice of the story, how everything here is filtered through Dov’s particular perception, translated into his way of seeing the world. The way that the aliens are “translated” into the speech patterns that he’s familiar with, which helps to give him added insight into the meaning of their words, and their intentions, because the subtle ways people communicate comes through here, and Dov doesn’t miss his opportunity to use that, to use that he’s getting in many ways a more profound translation. And it does give the piece a lighter air, despite the fact that it’s taking on some very dark and serious subject matter, evoking the often brutal and horrendous ways that Jews have been persecuted on Earth. What actually draws Dov into the plot personally is his sense of compassion and understanding for people who are facing genocidal violence. Even so, the tone remains full of humor, full of a certain kind of ridiculous that makes the story easier to handle and digest. It’s a neat bit of work, wrapping up a situation that is fairly textbook alien diplomacy (as out of Star Trek or something like that) and adding this distinctly Jewish take on it. The result is something that I smiled all the way through, that’s charming and just a bit silly for all that it’s also deathly serious as well. A wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-35376792140588022042019-02-22T00:00:00.000-08:002019-02-22T00:00:08.597-08:00THE SIPPY AWARDS 2018! The "Where We're Going We Won't Need Categories" Sippy for Excellent I Don't Know What in Short SFFWelcome back to the fifth and final category of the <b>Fourth&nbsp;Annual Sippy Awards!</b>&nbsp;It’s doesn’t have the history or prestige of the Hugos or Nebulas or...well, any other award, but I like to think the Sippys represent a much needed niche in the award season. For me, at least, it’s a chance to celebrate the stories I loved from the last and remind myself that not everything is about the Big Awards. Sometimes it’s rewarding to just love what you love, and make no excuses for it. In that vein, the Sippys were born, and I definitely encourage everyone: don’t be shy about celebrating the stories you loved. Make awards for them, write reviews about them—have fun and add a bit of joy into the universe!<br /><div><br /></div><div>But anyway. I’ve shipped my favorite relationships, hidden under the covers from the scariest horror, wept rivers for the most emotional tear-jerkers, and drove fast and took chances with the most pulse-pounding action! Which leaves just one category to go, and it’s...</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The “Where We’re Going We Won’t Need Categories”&nbsp;</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Sippy Awards&nbsp;</span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">for Excellent I Don’t Know What in Short SFF</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>So what's the deal? Well, the thing is, categories are tricky things, and no matter how I refined my original ideas for them, there seemed to be something...missing. Because what about those stories that just...don't fit? Part of why I love SFF is that the stories can be almost anything, can cover ground that's never been explored, can blaze trails and innovate in ways that other genres just can't. SFF is the genre of dreams, of strangeness, of uncharted stars. It's a place where things can get downright weird on a regular basis, and that's completely Okay! In fact, I love that! And this category is where everything goes that just doesn't fit anywhere else. They inspire, and they provoke, and they challenge, and they entertain. I don't know what else to call them, so I'll just call them excellent!<br /><br />For venues, there's two making their first appearance in this year's Sippys. The Dark just managed to punch its pro-paying ticket, and though that might change with the recent updates at the SFWA, for now it's definitely a voice from wonderful (and as the name implies, certainly dark) SFF. And Fireside Magazine is putting out tons of amazing work. Though much of its content leans short, it's also put out novelettes and even novellas, and is (I hope) a rising star in the field. Returning to the Sippys are works from Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and Apex, who all definitely put out a lot of content that's often hard to quantify. So yeah, let's get to the awards!<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><b>The Regular Sippys</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/luo_09_18/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“The Foodie Federation’s Dinosaur Farm”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Luo</b></span><b>&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Longxiang</b>, translated by&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b><i>Andy&nbsp;</i></b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b><i>Dudak</i></b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Clarkesworld) [novelette]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">So you want to talk weird? This story follows an uprising of sentient dinosaurs who have been raised for their meat and it's a kinda bizarre but also sharp critique of colonial narratives, showing the consuming history behind the "noble savage" storylines. In some ways, it's like <i>The Last Samurai</i>&nbsp;if the samurai were intelligent lizards. Just brilliant satire in the most unexpected of ways.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-house-on-the-moon/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: georgia, utopia, &quot;palatino linotype&quot;, palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">“The House on the Moon”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>William</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Alexander</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Uncanny) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Coming out of an absolutely stunning <i>Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction!</i>, this story takes place on the Moon in a future where warfare and attempted genocidal "cleansing" make for a very loaded and difficult setting. For me, it's a story about the weight of history and the need to reconcile with the sins of the past. It's an incredibly fun read, growing out of some very dark times to reach for a future without fear.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="http://thedarkmagazine.com/last-epic-pub-crawl-brothers-pennyfeather/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: georgia, utopia, &quot;palatino linotype&quot;, palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">“The Last Epic Pub Crawl of The Brothers Pennyfeather”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>L</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Chan</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(The Dark) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Bill and Bob are brothers and exorcists in the family business, and business is always busy. After a bad outing, though, Bob's lost a lot of his direction, and his ability to do the Work has been impacted by his lingering grief, guilt, and anger. So it's up to Bill to draw him back to what he does best through a walking tour of hauntings that slowly reveal the truth of what's happened, and lays out a path forward for Bob, so that maybe he can get back to living.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/coyote-now-wears-a-suit" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: georgia, utopia, &quot;palatino linotype&quot;, palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">“Coyote Now Wears a Suit"</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Ani</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Fox</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Apex) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">This is a captivating and weird and glorious story about identity and family and expectations. It features Kupua, trapped in some ways by the lies he's tried to live with, with the hopes he's tried to kill. Caught between definitions, between genders, between cultures, she's floundering when Coyote enters her life and kicks it hard enough to shake loose the bullshit and rationalizations that have built up around it. The rest is entirely up to Kupua...</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">which leaves the...</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dipTNnG7iuI/XGrErKMJB7I/AAAAAAAAE8s/L7dVyl4KoAwkqWQgs21Ttbmy9R5dl5l_gCLcBGAs/s1600/IDontKnow_Clark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="648" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dipTNnG7iuI/XGrErKMJB7I/AAAAAAAAE8s/L7dVyl4KoAwkqWQgs21Ttbmy9R5dl5l_gCLcBGAs/s640/IDontKnow_Clark.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><a href="https://firesidefiction.com/the-secret-lives-of-the-nine-negro-teeth-of-george-washington" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Phenderson Djèlí&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Clark</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Fireside) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Challenging history and our complacency with it by completely reimagining the events surrounding the formation of the United States of America, this story is dazzling in its world building and unflinching in exposing the taint dwelling at the heart of the myth of America. I just absolutely love the way the story uses fantasy to show how actual history has been consumed by the storybook versions of the "founding fathers." How our textbooks have erased or rewritten lived realities and abuses, genocide and slavery, into more palatable narrative that we can sell our kids. That we can be proud of. That we can love without conflict. When the truth is that this version of events holds more of the spirit of what happened than the lies we often teach in schools and see on bookshelves. That here, for all the magic and the touches of fantasy, at least the larger factual injustice is not committed, and we get a sense of the men behind the myths in a much more nuanced and likely accurate way. The story reminds us that we must be critical of the legends a country tells about itself, and must not overlook the horrors and the atrocities that helped to build a nation that no one should be able to love without complication. And it's a wonderfully imagined, incredibly fun, appropriately challenging story that you owe it to yourself to read!</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">---</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></div></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-65688500803546643942019-02-21T04:58:00.000-08:002019-02-21T04:58:05.537-08:00Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #39<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lhL-gAFTRqU/XG6gO0UVy3I/AAAAAAAAE9M/8F6mN0pNokcfw297QOEHPJsn0VljDjkjwCLcBGAs/s1600/timthumb.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="867" height="115" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lhL-gAFTRqU/XG6gO0UVy3I/AAAAAAAAE9M/8F6mN0pNokcfw297QOEHPJsn0VljDjkjwCLcBGAs/s400/timthumb.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/jjpeabody">Jereme Peabody</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>Feburary brings the first <a href="http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=2703">Heroic Fantasy Quarterly</a> of 2019 and the publication is definitely sticking to its mandate to publish action-forward fantasy that’s very much concerned with what it means to be heroic. There are two novelettes, two short stories, and two poems to enjoy, and the fiction at least is largely about men dealing with honor and justice, trying to figure out what the limits are to trying to do the right thing, and what happens when you step too far outside what is right. It’s an issue full of gritty fights, eldritch horrors, and perhaps a little simmering desire as well. And before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!</i></div><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Servant of the Black Wind” by <b>Gregory Mele</b> (8480 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Split between two perspectives, this story tips heavily toward horror/dark fantasy as it builds up around a temple to a god of death, and the unique defenses such a place contains. Where, even when completely surprised by the audacity of a direct assault, something wakes that might best have been left to slumber. It’s a piece that doesn’t shy away from gore or violence, using language that runs from flowery to brutal to describe not only what happens inside the temple, but reveals the treasures of such a place. Which makes it something of a difficult read, because it’s not very pleasant, and there’s a lot of pain and death to wade through only to find new depths of violation and gruesome fate to explore.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Gods, Rituals, Undead, Desecration, Death, CW- Assault/Slavery</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This piece definitely reaches back to an older style of fantasy, one a bit more steeped in ideas of dark gods and rituals that for me holds something of an Egyptian feel to it. There’s a bit of that pulpy “exotic” feel to the setting, which makes it somewhat conflicting for me. Because while I certainly appreciate the way that the story explores and builds the world, it’s one that uses language culled from an age of fantasy that...wasn’t exactly great when it came to depicting people of different races, religions, or stations. There’s the layer of the characters’ racism and superiority, but there’s also the layer that is woven into the setting itself, with “dusky, near-naked savages” and “almond-shaped eyes” and, well, it’s entirely possible that the story is playing with these elements in an effort of make a subtle point about the problems of reaching back to more “classic” fantasy, but it’s presented in a way that really doesn’t support that reading, as merely a earnest storytelling choice, and for that, and especially with the dark elements of the story, it really wasn’t one that I personally enjoyed. It’s possible, though, given that most of the characters in the story meet bad ends, though, that we’re supposed to think they...earned...their punishment because of their intolerance and bigotry? Again, I’m not sure how much traction that reading has for me, and so I’m going to have to recommend people make up their own minds on this one, and to proceed with definite caution.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Tymass by Ring-Light” by <b>Mike Adamson </b>(12883 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Derros has returned to the city that was his home before his dishonorable discharge led him out into the wastes and, as fate would have it, into the company of a princess who was in something of a bad situation. Having helped her out, Derros finds himself able to revisit the source of his exile, a festering wound on his honor that won’t allow him to stay silent, even when he knows it will end in blood...maybe even his own. This piece is a mix of action and more ponderous thought, building up in the character of Derros a man who has flourished in exile and yet still resents what happened to him. Not because of the specifics of the situation, not because of what he did, but because he was coerced into doing it, cheated in a way that offends him deeply, and makes mockery of his sacrifice.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Duels, Trials, Cheating, Justice, Gods</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I kind of love the way this story plays with the idea of honor. Where Derros is committed to seeing justice done, even as he concedes that had the exact thing happened “honestly” he would have no problem with it. And in that way it’s a story for me about chance and about faith and about gods. Because part of what really offends Derros seems to be that the gods didn’t have their say in the outcome of the roll of the dice. Derros was cheated, and acted honorably for all that because he didn’t know that he had been cheated. But once he knew, once he figured it out, it ate at him. Because it’s something that twisted his actions from being pious and honorable to being foolish and naive. He was acting in good faith, rather literally, but because of the actions of another, he was made part of this act of bad faith. And even though he was the victim, he bears the burden of that. At the same time, I like that the princess has absolutely no patience for it. Not just because she likes the man who cheated Derros, but because she sees the waste here, the pointlessness of the bloodshed. And she doesn’t quite let Derros all the way off the hook, either, despite that he is still the victim, is still acting honorably and faithfully and as he feels he must. But the fact remains that a man dies because of it. Now, the story sets that up as more the dead man’s fault than anyone else’s, because he might have found a different way as well, but it shows the narrow roads that honor makes, and the tragedy that even a “good” outcome can carry. It’s a fun story, nicely balanced and solidly built, with a great core relationship between Derros and the princess. It’s a wonderful read!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Merit of One Gold Piece” by <b>Dave D’Alessio </b>(5849 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> John Lack-Linen is a sell-sword, which might make him an unlikely choice for private investigator, but when an old man’s daughter is found guilty of witchcraft (she floated, you see), he’s the only one available to look into the truth of the matter. But the truth can be difficult indeed to find out, especially for a man who is doesn’t exactly have a deft hand at asking questions. What he does have, though, is the determination to get to the bottom of things. Whether that’s because of the gold coin on offer, though, or something different and deeper than that, is another matter entirely.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Bargains, Gold, Elves, Demons, Witches, Justice</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> I do very much appreciate how the story approaches bargains and truths. John is someone who’s not exactly likable, but imagine a noir detective lost in a different genre and you’ll have perhaps a good idea of what makes John an interesting character. He’s not someone who prospers. Given how hardy he is, how good he is in a scrap, that might seem strange. He should be a good and successful sell-sword. But he’s not, in part because what motivates him isn’t money. If it did, he’d probably have no problem making it. Or taking it. Whichever. As it stands, he’s motivated in part by a sense of justice, and a knowledge that the system often reaches the wrong conclusion. He’s a man of honor in some ways, for all that he’s also a complete asshole in other ways. That balance is part of what makes the story interesting, because he’ll walk right in someplace meaning to cause trouble but end up helping them. It’s like he’s accidentally an honest man, or maybe he’s too stubborn and stupid to be dishonest. He’s not one for subtle, not one for guile. He’s like his sword, blunt and handy in a life-or-death struggle, but certainly not pretty and not really something you’d want to rely on, given another option. Still, it’s rather fun to see the shit kicked out of him as he goes about trying to do the right thing in the worst ways possible. It’s a neat and rather gritty read that manages a clever melding of styles, and it’s definitely a story to check out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“The Gatekeeper” by<b> Marlane Quade Cook </b>(1880 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> An adventurer comes to a set of ruins with a gate he needs to pass through. Only it’s guarded by a mysterious gatekeeper, a woman who might also be part lion, part dragon, and who might also be a little tired of her vigil, of watching everyone who comes pass through the gate into what is probably ruin. It’s a piece that keeps things rather mysterious, keeping the dialogue and the actions of the adventurer and gatekeeper very staged, very precise, as if they are engaged in a kind of dance and find in the other a worthy dance partner. And while I’m not sure exactly what the gate might be to (though I’m guess it’s a gate into some sort of death or afterlife), it’s a piece that conveys a feeling of time and distance and movement and something tragic and wonderful at the same time.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Gates, Missions, Mists, Time, Transformations</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a strange piece, one that brings to mind for me the sphinx and the idea of time. Of aging. Of life and death. I’m guessing that it’s meant to, as the form of the woman in the story seems to be a sphinx, though I don’t think it’s ever expressly stated. That’s how she looks, though she can transform into an almost entirely humanoid figure as well. The story focuses on this meeting between adventurer and sphinx, and it’s such a loaded meeting. One that could be about more than meeting one more adventure. Or, I mean, for me maybe that’s not quite true. Because for me the story seems to be about meeting death, and pressing beyond, and how people do that. How they meet their end, and how they might see death as just another part of their journey. For this man, at least, it seems to be, this mysterious and dark place beyond the gate another place to stride into full of energy and hope and vigor. And yet there’s something else to the piece, as well, that sad smile that the woman has when he goes. Her saying that she’s seen what’s on the other side. And I wonder if it implies that there’s nothing past the gate. For me, at least, it opens that possibility, that she has seen beyond and the nothing that is waiting there and knows where these people are going, and yet she is still moved by the way this man faces it, so certain that he is headed somewhere new, somewhere different. A place, though, where he still has a future, and not one where his journey and adventures are done. So yeah, it’s a piece that I feel benefits from spending some time with. I might be entirely off base with my reading, but whatever the case I think it’s one to spend some time with and it’s a fine read!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Poetry</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Bardic Dreams” by <b>Deborah Guzzi</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This poem speaks to me of relief, and the time after battles when warriors need a release from the strain of battle, from the memory of the death they witnessed and authored. For me the poem does a few things, first and foremost showing this needed exhalation after battle, where the survivors push themselves into a bit of life that is about joy and expression and physical connection. There is a bit of a cyclic feel to the piece for me because of the way it echoes lines throughout, which for me also gives the poem an almost fractured reading. That here it’s not just this peaceful scene, but there’s something broken about it, about the people and the very idea that this music and romance can wash away the battle. The other part of the poem that I really like, though, is that it shows the people listening not just to stories or songs, but those that are in some ways about battle, about what they’ve just known the reality of. And for me it’s then a way of putting that gruesome reality back into this fantasy context, where it can be a story again and in that way can be made safe and logical. It can be given a structure that the real thing lacks, and in that structure it can be predicted. It can be something that makes sense and not the chaos of death and blood that these people know it to be. Because they know that they’ll have to go back to it, will need to enter battle again, and to do that they need to first convince themselves that there is something to fight for, and that fighting is romantic and good, when really it’s the parts after the battles that give them more joy and happiness. And it’s a nicely lyrical and moving piece, and definitely worth checking out!</div><div><br /></div><div>“A Sea-Monstrous Hǎi Guài Attacks Ching Shih’s Pirate Ship” by <b>Kendall Evans</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I love the framing of this poem, where it’s wrapped in a series of footnotes that act like they’re coming from a translator. This gives the piece something of a “found text” feel to it, but also pulls the action of the piece out of the purely fantastical and makes it something of an act of scholarship as well, with the notes providing context and further fleshing out the story and the situation of Ching Shih and her pirate fleet. It blends history and fantasy, magic and a more contemporary eye as the translator provides a gateway into a different world right here on planet Earth. And the poem itself is full of action and drama, with Ching Shih’s ship attacked by a great beast of the sea drawn for some unknown reason into choosing Ching Shih to battle against. The piece is populated by a great many characters and the notes help to make sense of them, cluing in the reader with a much larger and more in depth implied backstory without actually having to go into it. Not that the piece is purely fantasy, as there was a historical Ching Shih, and the realities of her life are indeed the stuff of fantasy, full of action and adventure at a time when most would think her exploits impossible. So the poem also challenges the idea that this is all hearsay and conjecture, because the history of Ching Shih is itself amazing and incredible, so is it really that much harder to believe that something like this might have happened? Full of magic and gripping battles? I think at least that the piece does a wonderful job in blurring the lines of reality and fiction in a nice way, wrapping it in layers of “research” that gives it an air of authenticity on top of being incredibly fun to read. A fantastic poem!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-62578424872472349412019-02-21T00:00:00.000-08:002019-02-21T06:37:01.391-08:00THE SIPPY AWARDS 2018! The "Time to Run Some Red Lights" Sippy for Excellent Action!!! in SFFWelcome back to the Fourth Annual Sippy Awards! Some part of you might be wondering, “why?” The answer: to celebrate short SFF across different styles that make excellent use of various elements to shine as examples of why I love this field. There’s no panel of judges or voting population, just me and my inflated ego and love of short SFF. Given how most short SFF awards focus on length, I wanted to look instead at how stories use different elements to stand out and be powerful. This year I’ve already shipped some excellent relationship, cowered before some excellent horror, and bawled from the some emotionally devastating reads. Which means today it’s time to put the pedal to the metal with...<br /><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The “Time to Run Some Red Lights” Sippy Awards&nbsp;</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">for Excellent Action! in Short SFF</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>These are stories that got my blood pumping, that made me want to run outside and punch an eagle in the face. Or, perhaps more accurately, they made me want to climb into a mech suit and punch the moon! I mean, come on, the moon is pretty smug up there, always looking down on everyone. Just saying. Anyway, the action doesn't always have to be traditional battles and brawls. Some of these stories are about a chase, or a race. Some are about war and the struggle of the individual against the weight of history and press of injustice. But these stories run hot, fast, and furious, and I think that stories like that deserve to be seen, because they do show how much fun and thrilling short SFF can be without sacrificing nuance or meaning.<br /><br />As to the venues, there's perhaps less surprises here as they have been in other categories. All the venues are pro-paying and rather high prestige. Uncanny and Strange Horizons are both making second appearances in this years Sippys, and Lightspeed punches its ticket along with both Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It's not that, in my opinion, any of these publications are more action-focused, but when they choose to go for it, they do brilliantly. So let's get to the awards!<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><b>The Regular Sippys</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/chasing-the-start/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Chasing the Start”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Evan</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Marcroft</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Strange Horizons) [novelette]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Sa Segokgo is a famous racer in a competition that's not your usual fare. She pilots a mech suit that races through time, through alternate realities, risking life and limb and perhaps most of all, her reputation in an attempt to keep a promise she made long ago. With age wearing on her, though, and the competition getting fiercer, it's uncertain if this latest race will be her last.</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://uncannymagazine.com/article/pistol-grip/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Pistol Grip”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Vina Jie-Min</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Prasad</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Uncanny) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">This is a rather startling and brash and sexy and yet nuanced look at life and death for a pair of should-have-been-decommissioned super soldiers. Built and trained to kill, they're still figuring out the other parts as they try to steer a course forward, haunted by their experiences and their abuse and trying through it all to take ownership of their actions, their bodies, and their hearts.</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/gilman_02_18/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Umbernight”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Carolyn Ives</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Gilman</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Clarkesworld) [novella]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; font-size: 15.4px;">Dust in a distant world where a small colony is finally learning how to navigate a quasi-seasonal shift that is incredibly deadly. Mostly they just remain locked in caves while a certain light is in the sky, giving off its strange radiation. But with a ship inbound from their ancestors, Mack's tasked with leading a small group to retrieve what's been sent...hopefully before the shift. Things, of course...don't go to plan.</span></span><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/i-sing-against-the-silent-sun" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“I Sing Against the Silent Sun”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">,<b>&nbsp;A. Merc Rustad </b>&amp;<b> Ada Hoffmann</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Lightspeed) [novelette]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Poetry and resistance meet in this vividly rendered story about intimacy, abuse, and voice. In a galaxy where brutal dictators can go so far as to alter entire peoples so that they cannot speak, cannot dissent, Li Sin and Vector are revolutionaries who have been deeply hurt in their quest for justice and freedom. Mostly they've given up the fight, but events conspire to bring them in again, and pit the power of art against the brutality of tyranny.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">which leaves the...</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZea9Bwy5jY/XGrDWDXrg7I/AAAAAAAAE8g/Sm7EEuOVR24-MkESDCcHcmCiBX-K3kttACLcBGAs/s1600/Action_Sanford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="648" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZea9Bwy5jY/XGrDWDXrg7I/AAAAAAAAE8g/Sm7EEuOVR24-MkESDCcHcmCiBX-K3kttACLcBGAs/s640/Action_Sanford.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-emotionless-in-love/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“The Emotionless, In Love”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">,&nbsp;<b>Jason</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Sanford</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Beneath Ceaseless Skies) [novella]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Following the powerful "Blood Grains Speak Through Memories," this novella (one of only a few published at Beneath Ceaseless Skies) follows Colton, a young man without emotions. Even without fear or love or hate, Colton knows the benefits of having a community, of fitting in. In a setting where smart "grains" can override certain people's will and make them into killing machines should they violate the natural world, fitting in is rather necessary. Only through constant motion and never exploiting the world can people survive. Only when Colton's caravan stumbles across a buried secret, the lies of the grains comes clear, as well as their desire to cover up their own inconvenient past. The piece is thrilling and awesome in its scope and scale. The battles here are stunning, the stakes visceral, and the outcome never certain. It's a damaged world that Colton and the grains share, but that doesn't mean it can't be battered further as the cycles of violence continue. And at the heart of it, a different kind of fire burns, and the story does a wonderful job exploring passion, love, and all the emotions that Colton was missing out on. It's a roller coaster of a read, cinematic and richly detailed with an ensemble cast and beautifully haunting world. So if you haven't already, set aside some time and Read. This. Story!</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">---</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-73446648243469991282019-02-20T04:35:00.002-08:002019-02-20T04:35:05.168-08:00Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #271<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s1600/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="1000" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8D7_qinxDQ/XFeLiS4UW0I/AAAAAAAAE6g/z2yNmwZKWIEc66zh1irU-ftgLUVDZqRsQCLcBGAs/s400/DreamsofAtlantis_FlavioBolla_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Art by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flaviobolla.com/">Flavio Bolla</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><i>The stories in the latest issue of <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-271/">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a> show once again that the publication (and editor) does a great job in pairing stories by theme and feel. Because here are two pieces that take place in vastly different worlds, but where gender roles and societal outlooks do a lot of harm in how people relate to one another and how they handle loss and grief. Both stories find people desperately trying to push forward their craft, to cheat death. And, well, that rarely works out so well. Through it, though, there are moments when people have the opportunity to push through the prejudices and problems of their times and cultures...and sometimes do, and sometimes don’t. The result is the difference between tragedy and hope, between life and death. So let’s get to the reviews!</i><div><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div><b>Stories</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Blood, Bone, Seed, Spark” by <b>Aimee Ogden</b> (9707 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers:</i></b> Anell is a scientist in a society that is bent, magic and science, toward the struggle against death—toward the great Victory that is immortality. Anell is driven, relentless, and unconventional, pursuing creating life that will be immortal rather than simply reacting to the ways that time degrades human bodies and faculties. It’s a somewhat isolated life she lives, which mostly works for her, and yet that begins to change as she settles into her residency. The piece is about science and discovery, about life and conflict, and it dives into some dark waters, pressing deeper and deeper towards an unsettling, visceral ending.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> Science, Mortality, Patronage, CW- Reproduction</div><div><b><i>Review:</i></b> This is a difficult read, not least because of the way that Anell approaches science, the way that everyone in this setting approach it, as a weapon against the great adversary of death. As a tool to pry out as much life from the other side of the veil as possible. And Anell is very good at what she does, realizing that with advances in technology it’s possible to revisit old theories that no one bothered to confirm or challenge because they didn’t seem to lead anywhere. And in some ways they still don’t, because as much as Anell learns more from her research, none of it seems to really work. Because she approaches it from the old misconceptions of the past, it takes quite a while for her to figure out what she has to do in order to move forward. In order to advance her understanding of what life is, and what gives people their spark. And the answer she finds is...well, rather horrifying. But it makes so much sense within the world of the story, where life itself is framed as a war against Death. So of course it’s violent, and of course it’s disturbing. Because it reveals that this approach to life is one built upon a mentality of conflict and destruction. Kill or be killed. Without that danger, without the immediacy of mortal combat, it seems like true sentience isn’t possible. It’s a fascinating way of twisting the ways that science works in our world and imagining it as one of the “false leads” that historical scientists had when thinking about reproduction. Only here it’s rendered in all its gory details, the result unsettling and difficult and almost stunned, unsure of what comes next. And it’s a strange, interesting read that I definitely recommend people spend some time with, though maybe be prepared.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Adrianna in Pomegranate” by <b>Samantha Mills</b> (4295 words)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>No Spoilers: </i></b>Benedetto is a Calligramancer, which is rare for a man, who are seen as not careful enough with the potent, reality-altering power that the magic embodies. And yet it’s something he’s always been drawn to, always loved, and with a grief festering in his heart, it’s what he turns to when he can’t bear any more. So he decides he will seek out the perfect spell, one that can erase his grief, that can heal his emotional wounds. Because magic is supposed to shape reality, and what truly is forbidden to a person with that kind of gift? It’s a heavy story, one that shows the weight that he is carrying and the way that he’s carrying it alone, trapped by the rigid gender roles of his society and not knowing how else to express himself. It’s a powerful, painful experience, and not one that is entirely without hope and healing.</div><div><b><i>Keywords:</i></b> CW- Loss of a Child, Writing, Magic, Grief, Resurrection, Marriage</div><div><b><i>Review: </i></b>I like what this story does with magic, and with marriage, and with gender roles. It does break out from the traditional set of prejudices, putting men this time in the place where their judgment and temperaments are called into question when it comes to Important Work. And here we see that in some ways Benedetto is falling right into line with those, “proving” that he’s not to be trusted when it comes to using magic, because look at what he’s doing. At the same time, though, I think the piece is exploring how this failure, this transgression, is something that came about not because of his failings, but because of how he is trapped by expectations and oppression. How he’s not given support from his partner, Sidony, because she decides that she can’t show her grief. So the marriage fractures and falls apart, leaving Benedetto able to express but still punished for it. So he turns to magic as a way of trying to undo this damage. To return things to how they were or at least to stem his emotions like everyone else seems to be doing. Only Sidony isn’t exactly handling things either, and I like that she’s not portrayed here as rational or healthy. Not really. Because she’s in a cage, too, where she can’t express herself or else she’ll face the ostracizing that Benedetto faces. And it’s only once they can break down their respective barriers, when they can both fully inhabit their grief and face their loss, that they can walk away from the cliff that gender roles were pushing them towards. And I like that, in the end, they are able to start to make progress not necessarily back towards some point in their past. Not even necessarily back towards a romantic partnership. But that they are able to move forward, towards a kind of healing, is a lovely bit of hope fucked into a very dark situation. And it’s a great read!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">---</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5921299676772566445.post-6732424174781911362019-02-20T00:00:00.000-08:002019-02-20T05:17:40.380-08:00THE SIPPY AWARDS 2018! The "There's Something in My Eye" Sippy for Excellent Making Me Ugly-Cry in Short SFFThe 4th Annual Sippy Awards keeps right on moving! That’s right, the SFF awards that no one asked for and few pay attention to is back! I’ve shipped my favorite relationships, and I’ve cowered in fear before my favorite horror stories. Which means that it’s time to reduce myself to a small puddle of tears somewhat resembling a functioning human being. yes, it’s time for...<br /><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The “There’s Something in My Eye” Sippy Award&nbsp;</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">for Excellent Making Me Ugly-Cry in Short SFF</span></b></div></div><div><br /></div><div>I’m something of an emotive reader, which means that there are times when reading that a story just hits me right in the feels and I need to take a moment to recover. These are stories that, for me, are defined most by their emotional weight. By the impact they have, the ability to completely destroy all the careful emotional shields we use to keep the rest of the world at bay. These are the stories that pry open the shell of control I try surround myself in and leave me little more than a blubbering mess. So joining me in smiling through the tears and celebrating this year’s winners!<br /><br />When it comes to venues, it's once again a rather eclectic mix. I'm so happy to include a Shimmer story here, in part because it was the publication's final year and they've definitely given me a lot of stories over the years that have made me weepy. And there's the second story from Omenana to receive a Sippy, too. Seriously, if anyone is missing this magazine, reconsider. There's so much amazing work. Tor makes its first appearance in the Sippys this year, as does Terraform, two publications that are part of larger publishing bodies that definitely flex their reach to bring in some awesome stories each year. And the winner here is from what was probably my favorite publication of 2018, Strange Horizons (at least, it definitely led the pack with stories that made it to my recommended reading list). So yeah, a diverse bunch. To the awards!<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><b>The Regular Sippys</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://www.tor.com/2018/09/19/nine-last-days-on-planet-earth-daryl-gregory/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Nine Last Days on Planet Earth”</a>,&nbsp;<b><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Daryl&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Gregory</span></b><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Tor) [novelette]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Sweeping in its scope, the piece looks at a sort of invasion of Earth, but not one that you might expect. And it follows a man from his early childhood, dealing with family and ambition and love and loss and there's such beauty to it, such hope and vulnerability. The way it handles family and adaptation and maybe even extinction is so careful and just hit me right in the feels, okay?</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://omenana.com/2018/04/21/origami-angels-derek-lubangakene" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Origami Angels”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Derek&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Lubangakene</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Omenana) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Focusing on two boys who bond over comic books and superpowers, this piece builds up this wonderful situation where Duncan and Asaf are striving for perfection in the face of death and tragedy. And the piece really looks at what it means to live, and what makes living worthwhile, as seen and witnessed through the eyes of children who are have had to deal with so much already. Shattering but oh so good.</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://www.shimmerzine.com/me-waiting/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Me, Waiting for Me, Hoping for Something More”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Dee</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Warrick</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Shimmer) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; font-size: 15.4px;">In some ways this could almost be a horror story, as it frames a trans woman being haunted by a sort of ghost. Only the nature of the ghost is both intimate and toxic, a sort of condensation of fear and hurt and gaslighting given insidious voice inside this woman's head. But how she reaches for healing, and hope, is emotionally resonating and incredibly rendered. It's a story with a palpable darkness, but also an unyielding light.</span></span><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Sippy_Face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="1067" height="120" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynBuEk3X5X8/WGEmv0QQhWI/AAAAAAAAC5A/Sym-6U2WmB0tjlMyeEBCjnQyinOoTekiwCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Sippy_Face4.jpg" width="82" /></a></div><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyw8km/the-river" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“The River”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Tori</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Cárdenas</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Terraform) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; font-size: 15.4px;">Imagining a future where the current trends in immigration "reform" and injustice continue, the story finds the narrator deported to a country they've never known, a world that they were never a part of. Built around the dangers of climate change and ecological destruction, there's such a sense of fragility and loss here, showing the ways that bad policies only accelerate the planet on the road to complete annihilation.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">which leaves the...</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mBowAI8vnfo/XGrBuEsNrYI/AAAAAAAAE8U/j4UoKJPY9BcNcyh-KwH1MFVw-o-3nG60gCLcBGAs/s1600/UglyCry_Muneshwar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="648" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mBowAI8vnfo/XGrBuEsNrYI/AAAAAAAAE8U/j4UoKJPY9BcNcyh-KwH1MFVw-o-3nG60gCLcBGAs/s640/UglyCry_Muneshwar.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/salt-lines/" style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #888888; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">“Salt Lines”</a><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, <b>Ian</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>Muneshwar</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">(Strange Horizons) [short story]</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">This is another story that definitely knows how to marry darkness and beauty, this time focusing on a gay man from Guyana who is haunted by what he witnessed there and what he's brought with him to America. It's a story that looks very thoughtfully but viscerally the weight of the stories that justify violence against queerness. That make people into monsters that need to be destroyed. And how that can become a sort of seed, just as fairy tales and myths and folklore are supposed to, burrowing into people and growing into intolerance and hatred and violence. For Ravi, the main character, it's something that is eating him from the inside out, because of how it colors his interactions with his family, who he thought were okay with him, who he thought still loved him. But who, he finds out, are still stuck in the old stories, seeing him in many ways monstrous. And it's a story about what that monstrosity can become, how it can sublimate into something beautiful and affirming, but always carrying with it the darkness of the reality beneath the stories. That queer people often face brutal violence because of who they are, and that it's reinforced by a whole system of stories and laws. It's a crushing piece but one that reaches out for warmth and passion and pleasure and finds something worth holding onto. Prepare your feels for imminent destruction, but definitely go and read this one!</span><br /><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">---</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/quicksipreviews"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1400" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lbR7995V_SI/V_WsnBp-QaI/AAAAAAAACo0/Dq-HqQoASN4Bav-ZQkZAYW9uCpaunmdGACPcBGAYYCw/s400/PatreonFooter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3ffee; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;utopia&quot; , &quot;palatino linotype&quot; , &quot;palatino&quot; , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></div></div>Charles Payseurhttps://plus.google.com/112174956326770842418noreply@blogger.com0